OTHER PEOPLE by Christopher Shinn, directed by Aaron Willis, with Indrit Kasapi, Ben Lewis, Tatiana Maslany, Richard Lee, Brendan McMurtry-Howlett and Mike McPhaden. Presented by Mutual Friends at the Young Centre (55 Mill). Previews January 18, opens January 19 and runs to January 28, Monday-Saturday 8 pm, matinee Saturday 2:30 pm. $20, stu/srs $15. 416-866-8666. youngcentre.ca. See listing.
Tatiana Maslany has the apple cheeks of a teenager and the wry inflections of a brassy dame – a juxtaposition that makes the Regina native seem both youthfully vulnerable and wise beyond her 20-something years, even over low-res video Skype.
That tricky combination should add complexity to her current role as Petra, a poet and stripper with a heart of glass in Christopher Shinn’s Other People.
“Petra’s an older choice for me,” laughs Maslany, who won a Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Festival for her performance as a troubled 13-year-old in Adriana Maggs’s Grown Up Movie Star. Playing someone close to her own age is a rarity for Maslany, who’s thrilled by the opportunity.
“Her sexuality is fascinating,” she says. “She’s so razor-sharp – so full of opinions I don’t think she can ever really express.”
Maslany has been researching the working lives of exotic dancers to get a deeper sense of Petra’s world.
“The stripper and customer have an intriguing and confused kind of contract with one another,” she says thoughtfully. “There’s a weird intimacy that can evolve.”
Intimacy or its lack is at the heart of Shinn’s acerbic play. The title suggests a connection to Sartre’s existential one-act, No Exit, and hell can be found in the East Village apartment shared by Petra and her two 20-something friends.
All of them are dealing with faltering relationships and attempts at living the artist’s life. Maslany equates Petra’s desire to be watched with the artist’s often crippling desire to be perceived and understood.
“As a stripper, Petra has control of the room, and I think all artists struggle with their desire to be seen.”
Maslany has dealt with a variation of that desire first-hand since her Sundance win and consequent breakout status. Some actors might feel the pressure to pursue bigger roles or more awards, but she remains clear-eyed about the industry.
“That hype goes away fast,” she says with the hint of a smile. “You just get back to work like everybody else.”
After spending six months in Budapest filming a miniseries based on Ken Follett’s World Without End, Maslany is happy to be doing Other People in Toronto – her current home base – before heading to L.A. for pilot season.
Friend and actor Ben Lewis, whom she met years ago on the set of Stir Of Echoes 2: The Homecoming (“a blockbuster success,” she deadpans), brought the play to Maslany’s attention and initiated the project.
“We’re not in it for the money, because there is none. You have to really love it or it would be hell,” she laughs. In this case Sartre was dead wrong: hell isn’t even a little bit like Other People.
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