1982

by Jian Ghomeshi

  In the summer of 1982, I celebrated my first foray into professional theatre. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a lie. It was professional inasmuch as performing for fewer than seventyfive people a night in the outdoors and having only eight lines might be considered a professional theatre gig. But people had to pay to see the show. They had to pay five dollars. Or something. And when people pay for anything, it’s professional. Right? And anyway, no matter how professional you might’ve thought it was or it wasn’t, it was an important experience. I’d concluded that theatre was in my bones. And this was a major step up-market from performing the role of the pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Woodland Junior High in Grade 8. This was my real stage debut.

  In the spring of ’82, my Grade 9 schooling became devoted entirely to the Theatre Troupe program based out of Room 213. This elective was a full trimester of theatre and music that was part of Thornlea Secondary School’s fine-arts focus. It was quite revolutionary. Or at least we considered it to be. In Theatre Troupe, students spent all day every day doing acting exercises, reading plays, creating docudrama scenarios, and listening to New Wave music and Neil Young. We would do this for three months straight. Only this. In retrospect, it couldn’t be anything but a formative experience.

  The lights were kept low in 213. Even in the morning, when students first arrived. You might wonder why. But this was a no-brainer. Dim lighting was theatrical and demonstrated depth. In Theatre Troupe, each day was an adventure in drama and introspection. Everyone was very serious and eager to illustrate their passion. Between workshops and rehearsals, important things would be muttered amongst the Theatre Troupe students. Things like, “The world is totally fucked.” This was a necessary demonstration of emoting, because the inhabitants of 213 were so artistic. And as well, the students were all very deep and cared a great deal about the world. That is, everyone cared about the world except when they didn’t care about the world because things were just too heavy and “totally fucked” to spend time caring about it.

  Also, as part of a worldly outlook in 1982, everyone in 213 hated Thatcher and Reagan. It was important to hate them. I wasn’t entirely sure why. Neither of them was Canadian. But I knew that cool 213 students said Thatcher and Reagan had contributed to the world being fucked. So we all hated them. This was obligatory. On a personal level, I did remember that Margaret Thatcher had taken the milk away from school-children when I was a little kid in England. One year in the ’70s, we arrived at school to find there was no more free milk, which had been a staple of English education. Then everyone started saying, “Thatcher took our milk away!” I was unsure how this one woman had single-handedly taken all the milk. And I may also have thought her first name was Thatcher. But as I grew older, I understood that she’d taken our milk away because she was a Conservative. That’s what Conservatives in Britain did. I knew she was not very nice to school students. And there was no more free milk. And she probably wouldn’t have liked the artsy types who hated her in 213.

  One other essential tenet of the Theatre Troupe experience was sex. That came with the territory, too. Sexual cross-pollination seemed to be part of the burden of being a dedicated theatre student in 213. This was not mandated by the teachers, of course, but developed quite naturally amongst those enrolled in the program. Almost all of the students dutifully obliged in the sex part. I was a novice in this area, but eager to learn. The truth was, I was generally too intimidated to act on anything with the older Troupe members. Not yet. That was all way beyond me at this point.

  Despite my insecurities and confusion, I knew I wanted to be part of the Thornlea theatre scene. I knew music and theatre were my passions. And that Troupe was cool. And I knew that my sister had done theatre, and she was cool. And so I had angled to convince my parents to let me enroll in Theatre Troupe by getting through the full list of my obligatory math and science and history course requirements in the first two-thirds of the school year. Despite covering the educational bases, I knew my father would still be unhappy with the academic diversion of a full trimester of only theatre and music. He’d made his position clear. But I remained resolute. My father never really understood Theatre Troupe.

  “You are going to be playing weeth only thees acting all day?” he said.

  “It’s more than that, Dad. We’re learning about the world and life and struggles. We’re doing docudramas, too.” My replies were generally delivered in a patronizing tone. That was important. It demonstrated that I was ridiculing his mistaken ideas.

  “The world? You are learning all of thees by doing thees acting?”

  My father was never convinced.

  You see, to my father, Theatre Troupe sounded unproductive and even destructive. My sister had done theatre at Thornlea, and she had managed to be a brilliant academic student in addition to her foray into fine arts. But my father still didn’t get it. And he had been much harder on her when it came to 213. She had broken ground by mounting the first artsy insurrection in the Ghomeshi family. By the time I was angling for acting roles, my father had resigned himself to accepting it, but he still wasn’t very pleased. In his eyes, Theatre Troupe was tantamount to kids spending their school days in a playground or the mall. It was heretical. This was not how strong vocational futures were built for middle-class Iranian boys. But he was wrong. Theatre Troupe was not akin to hanging out in a playground. It was more about imagining hanging out in a playground (or maybe the mall). I was going to be an actor.

  The thing is, my father simply wasn’t as deep as the introspective theatre students of 213. Theatre Troupe students understood hardship and worried about the world being fucked, and also what to wear when worrying about the world being fucked. Oh sure, my father may have gone through some tough times himself. He may have lost his own dad at fifteen and raised his six younger siblings with my grandmother in Iran. He may have single-handedly carried on the family business while putting himself through school and university in Tehran. He may have struggled to become a top engineer and make a good life with his wife and kids in England and then Canada, where he had a heavy accent and was sometimes treated with disdain. He may have lived through all of that. But what did he know about real hardship? He didn’t understand a difficult life the way middle-class teenage theatre students at Thornlea did. We had perspective. And we had songs by the Cure. And we listened to music by bands that didn’t smile. We knew no one had it as tough as us. Maybe that’s what heavy New Wave eyeliner ultimately meant: life is hard.

  Finally, my father and my mother reluctantly agreed to let me enter the Theatre Troupe program.

  Mind you, that was not the end of the debate about my future career with my parents. It took a couple more decades for my father to truly accept my artistic interests. In university, I formed a band with Murray and Mike Ford and Dave Matheson, also former Thornlea theatre students. We called ourselves Moxy Früvous and started out as street buskers, performing in zany costumes. We would put on mini-shows on street corners and pass a hat around for tips, in the tradition of jugglers or fire-breathers. I would try to explain the concept to my father.

  “Dad, it’s called busking. It’s street performance. There is a long and distinguished tradition of busking around the world. People love buskers. We’re making art!”

  “Yes,” my father replied. “We have a name for thees in Iran as well. Eet is called begging.”

  You see, my parents really wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer. Don’t blame them. It’s not their fault. It’s in the manual for immigrant Persian parents. It took many years for my mother and father to accept that such vocational aspirations would not be realized when it came to their son. It was near devastating for them. Middle-class Iranians believe there is nothing more honourable than for their kids to become engineers. Somewhere, sometime back in the old country, there was a decree that engineering was the noble profession. I can’t tell you when this happened. I wasn’t there. But I know many brown families that seem to adhere to the
same handbook.

  And honestly, the pedestal upon which engineers are placed feels a little out of whack with contemporary society. The doctor thing might be understandable. Doctors make a fine salary and save other humans. They are important enough that they wear white lab coats. But I never quite got the engineer thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with engineers. There isn’t. But they don’t wear lab coats. Or save humans. Or make good music that kids can be inspired by. Still, the real rock stars in Iran have not been movie stars or footballers or politicians, they’ve been engineers.

  I have made a short list (or shortlist) of occupations that most middle-class Iranians would like their kids to pursue:

  doctor

  civil engineer

  businessman

  mechanical engineer

  general engineer

  As you can see, three of the top five occupations that Iranian parents seek for their kids are related to engineering. My father was an engineer. But it really wasn’t for me.

  As I got older, the windows gradually closed on all of these occupational possibilities for me. I just wasn’t interested in the maths and sciences as much, even though I did pretty well in those areas. And to their credit, my parents were ultimately liberal enough to allow me to pursue my passion. They gave me their blessing to enter Theatre Troupe in the final part of Grade 9. This was a significant turning point for me. To tell you the truth, notwithstanding some silly moments, it was in Theatre Troupe that I got much of my greatest high school education. It was in Troupe that I truly learned to question everything. The news. History. Ideas. Traditions. Laws. And this questioning came in very handy. I would later learn that questioning everything is called “critical thinking.” It helped me get top marks in political science and history courses in university. My father probably would not have guessed that in 1982.

  I was the youngest in Theatre Troupe and one of only a few Grade 9 students enrolled. I remember it being hard to get into. I’m not exactly sure that it was, but that’s how I always thought of it. Maybe it was because other students would say things like, “No way! You got into Theatre Troupe?” In reality, getting into Theatre Troupe largely required signing up to be in Theatre Troupe. That was mostly it. Mind you, hardly any Grade 9 students were accepted. My sister’s status as a theatre star helped my position.

  At the end of May 1982, it was announced that some of the members of Troupe would be doing a run of performances of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at an outdoor gazebo stage in Markham. The shows were scheduled for the end of June and early July. The news quickly became a hot topic amongst the Thornlea artsy crowd. Many of the cool older 213 students who were regularly clad in black and smoked were to be cast in the main roles. I auditioned and was proud to earn a part as one of the “mechanicals.” The mechanicals are the amateur players in Pyramus and Thisbe, a play within the play in Dream. It wasn’t much. But I was in. I was to perform the role of Tom Snout, the tinker.

  My casting as Snout paid immediate dividends. It led me to new levels of access within the elite circles of 213. At rehearsals after school as well as in class, I was now in regular proximity to the likes of Alexa Fotheringham and Mary Daniel and Mike Farnell. They were all three or four years older than me. They were all friends with my sister. And they were all real-like actors who smoked and wore black. I’m not actually sure that Alexa smoked, but she probably did. She had long dark hair and she was serious and she was a good actor. That meant she probably smoked.

  Most important, it was easier to meet my New Wave aspirations once my days were occupied in the theatre room. I no longer had gym class, where I might have to endure teasing from that Lacoste-wearing preppy Joel Price. He had beaten me at wrestling. And I didn’t have to hang out near the rockers in science classes or the yearbook types in the second-floor hallway. Bowie would have been out of place in phys. ed. or math class, too. I was gradually marching closer to my Bowietinted goal.

  Being the youngest and having a small role in the big Theatre Troupe show meant I was often at rehearsals but not paid much attention to. This suited me well, given that I was quite intimidated by all the thespian talent around me. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Snout has very few lines, and his most significant contribution is to transform into the wall that separates the gardens of Pyramus and Thisbe. The two lovers whisper to each other through Snout’s fingers, which are meant to represent a chink in the wall. My scenes added up to about five minutes of stage time. I think. Maybe seven minutes. There was no way to sugar-coat the limited nature of the gig. I was playing a tinker playing a wall. I know. It’s not the type of experience that self-esteem is supposed to be built on. But then, it wasn’t the limited nature of the role that would become an issue for my confidence, but the outfit I would be asked to wear.

  Since Thornlea Theatre Troupe’s outdoor staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a “professional” production, everyone had cool Shakespeare-like costumes. The actors wore boots and brown mesh and scarves and belts over the kind of pirate-type shirts Wendy’s brother wore. Paul wore pirate-type shirts because he was older and an emerging professional actor. I’m still not sure why theatre people were supposed to wear boots and baggy trousers tucked into the boots and pirate shirts onstage. I suppose that’s what Shakespeare himself wore, and serious actors were supposed to look like him. The more you looked like Shakespeare, the better an actor you were. That must be it. It’s like how an aspiring classical musician must benefit by looking a bit like Mozart. Or how an aspiring prophet would be wise to look like Moses. And so, everyone had these very fine costumes, including all the guys playing the mechanicals. Everyone, that is, except me.

  It seems the production team of Theatre Troupe’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream were one outfit short when it came to the mechanicals. While the other guys wore the pirate tops with big belts and boots and theatre pants, the only piece the costume people had for me was a giant mauve-coloured collarless shirt. To be fair, I really did have the smallest role in the play. Anyone else with a limited role was multi-tasking and playing other parts in the show as well. Not me. I was a natural to be the guy who ended up without a real costume. The mauve shirt I was given was procured in a dramatic frenzy backstage. It was on the day of the dress rehearsal that the slight dearth of costumes was discovered, and the costume people were improvising.

  My mauve shirt had no buttons, just a V-neck, and it was quite billowy and wide. I was very aware of being the youngest in the cast and, given the limited nature of my role, had the least leverage to launch any sartorial complaints. The shirt I was to wear was also very long. It was far too large for my body. And it had no collar. It came down to my mid-thighs. I really don’t know why a tinker would wear this outfit. But this was Shakespeare. And I assumed it was important for me to wear this frock rather than a New Wave T-shirt and jeans. Besides, I was in no position to decline the “costume.” But it got a bit worse: there really was no appropriate belt for my mauve shirt, so it just flowed down over my body with my skinny legs peeking out. I had been given black “theatre tights” to wear underneath (there were no proper trousers left, either) and a pair of black slip-ons that everyone called Chinese slippers. The reality was, it looked like I was wearing a dress. But not a fancy dress like a girl wears to the prom. Not one with bows and nice stitching. More of a dress like Jesus used to wear. Or the old Greek guys when they were thinking up excellent philosophies. Or what those traditional Saudi men might sport when they were on their way to pray. But actually, not even like that. It didn’t look as cool and acceptable as any of those. This wasn’t like a robe or an Arab thobe. It was more of a long-sleeved maternity dress. Except, no, it was really more of a minidress. I was performing in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the cool 213 crowd wearing an unbelted mauve minidress. On the night before our first performance, I asked Nancy, the nice costume girl—also a student at Thornlea—if she thought my outfit was a bit odd. She replied, “Don’t worry, this is theatre!” She was
trying to help me out. She assured me that no one would really notice. I would soon learn that Nancy was wrong.

  Each evening, when I came out to deliver my lines as Tom Snout playing the wall, I would hear the audience snicker. I tried to convince myself they were snickering because of my comedic turn as Snout, but I had a good sense that it was also due to my inexplicable mauve minidress. To accompany the costume, I was wearing quite heavily applied theatre makeup. In sum, along with my gelled and dyed hair, I probably appeared much less like a tinker and more like an innocent young drag queen. I don’t think being a drag queen was in the original script for Snout the tinker. I did my lines as Snout with an English accent. This was comfortable, because it was what I’d grown up with. But the accent just made me stand out even more. My exit line as the wall was the zenith of my performance.

  Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;

  And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.

  Some people in the crowd would cheer a bit and laugh when I left the gazebo stage after delivering the final words of my big moment. I took little delight in the reaction. I was very self-conscious about my lines. And I was madly self-conscious about my minidress.

  Still, given that no one was saying anything explicit to me about the costume, I held out hope that the laughter I was generating had to do with my comedic timing. A Midsummer Night’s Dream has comic moments, after all. It’s meant to be a farce. I was simply part of that, right? Surely my outfit just fit the bill. But I was getting hints that my attire was not going unnoticed. During the first show, one of the Theatre Troupe leads, Donna Davis, bumped into me backstage and said, “Is that your costume?” She asked me this with a note of concern in her voice. She said it as if to suggest there had been some kind of mistake. I nodded. This was my costume.

  Toke came to our second night and barely spoke to me afterwards. This was odd for my best friend. He mumbled something about it being very much “like theatre and all dat,” and I chose not to pursue any further explication of his critical thoughts.