We likely all know someone like Nana — the mother, aunt, grandmother who has that unique ability to combine severe doses of admonishment with an underlying sense of powerful, maternal love.
That’s what makes seeing her night in and night out as the focal point of For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again — Gateway Theatre’s first production of the new season that runs Oct. 8 - 24 — so much fun, says, Kevin Loring, who plays the production’s narrator.
“Nana, she’s a force of nature to be reckoned with,” says Loring, part of the two-person cast that includes Margo Kane, filling the shoes of Nana, who is essentially award-winning Quebec playwright and novelist Michel Tremblay’s mother. “And we all know someone like her, somewhere in our lives.”
Loring says his role is to set up Nana to go off on one of her long-streaming monologues that express disdain for her offspring, in a loving and truly caring manner.
“Nana is a really dramatic, simple woman who is also explosive,” says Loring who first saw the production while he was studying drama at Langara’s Studio 58 about a decade and a half ago with well known Vancouver stage performer Nicola Cavendish in the lead role.
“It’s one of those plays where the character can make you cringe and then laugh out loud with tears streaming down your face. It’s an amazing balance that is created within a character.”
The opening scene where Nana launches into a tirade about her son and his friends tossing ice into the roadway to see what drivers would do is a prime example as she concludes the juvenile acts of bedevilment will ensure her offspring will never amount to anything in this world.
“It’s all about those mother-and-son moments where a mom can make their child feel guilty about anything they do,” Loring says, adding the effect on the audience is significant because they’ve either seen it happen to themselves or their friends.
“Nana is so universal. We all know this woman,” he says. “She’s in every town.”
Loring and Kane are members of Full Circle First Nations Performance and For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Againmarks the first time Gateway Theatre has had an all First Nations cast.
Loring, who lives in east Vancouver, is a Nlaka’pamux artist and an award-winning actor and playwright. His play Where the Blood Mixeswon the Governor General’s Award, a Jessie Richardson Theatre award, and was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award.
Kane is a Cree-Saulteaux artist, a pioneer in the Aboriginal artistic community and has won multiple awards including a LEO. Tickets are available by calling the Box Office at 604-270-1812 or online at gatewaytheatre.com.
