Sunday Feature: Interview - Seana McKenna

You and Your Audience
Seana McKenna takes you on her journey
by David Sklar
(All photos courtesy of Stratford Festival, all production photos by David Hou except when noted)

Seana McKenna was raised in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke and in nearby Port Credit. She spent one year at the University of Toronto before attending the National Theatre School in Montreal until 1979. She made her professional acting debut the same year at the Blyth Festival, appearing in This Foreign Land, Child by James Nichol and The Death of the Donnellys. Her long and distinguished association with the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario began in 1982, when she joined Shakespeare 3 Company, as the Festival's Young Company was then called, appearing as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream and as Diana in All's Well That Ends Well. Ms McKenna won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for her performance in the title role of Shaw's Saint Joan (Theatre Plus, 1991) and a second in 1998 for outstanding direction of Fugard's Valley Song. Her third Dora Award, in 2007, was for her performance as Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending. She received a Jessie Award for Wit and a Genie Award for The Hanging Garden. In 2010 Seana McKenna was awarded an honorary Master of Fine Arts degree from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. She served for six years on the Council of Canadian Equity, the actors' union, and for three years on its executive. Ms McKenna has received a Tyrone  Guthrie Award for mentorship. With impressive technique and a silky, flexible voice, Seana McKenna demonstrates passion, intensity and intelligence in every role. She is considered by many to be Canada's finest dramatic actress of her generation.

CHARPO: Where did it all begin for you in terms of acting?

McKENNA: I think Brian Bedford and I shared the same first role, which was the Virgin Mary. I was five. I had a next-door neighbour who was an actress.  Apparently, when I was about eight, I went with a bunch of neighbourhood kids and asked her if she would direct us in plays. I started at a very young age: in school plays. I had a fabulous theatre arts teacher in high school and I then went to Ontario Youth Theatre, the National Arts Centre and toured around with the Mad Woman of Chaillot. Then I went to Trinity College, they only had one drama course, and finally at the National Theatre School (NTS)  I told myself, “I’ll keep doing this as long as I get work”. I have been fortunate.  

CHARPO: And you worked with Joel Miller at NTS?

McKENNA: Yes. In my last two years. But I was brought in by Douglas Rain: he auditioned me. And those were heady days. The Parti Québécois has just been elected, and Montreal was a hopping city. There was one night, where I was asleep and it must have been around 3am and all of a sudden I heard car horns blaring in the street and the French side at school got the day off but we didn’t! Already there was a little bit of the two solitudes in the school. 

It was very exciting.  St-Denis was not the St-Denis that it is now. It was a great city to live and I think the sadness is that many English actors who went to the school couldn’t find enough work to stay.  You’d love to live there.  There just isn’t the same amount of work.