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Martha Burns says Domesticated offers more than shock value (Includes interview)

Martha Burns would like theatre goers to think about the word ‘grotesque’. It’s a word that describes her character Judy’s world in Bruce Norris’s unflinching play, Domesticated, thanks to the debauchery of her husband, Bill, played by Burns’s real life husband, Paul Gross.

The play – which has just been given an extended run until December 19th at the Berkeley Street Theatre – dives ruthlessly into Bill (a political figure) and Judy’s private unravelling after Bill’s tryst with a young prostitute (who somehow ends up in a coma) goes public.

Critics have praised the cast and lightning quick production directed by Philip Riccio, but some hammered Norris’s script for flailing between shocking and misogynist. Burns wonders, however, if those gnarly, less appealing bits of dialogue may be key to our communication as partners, parents and ultimately as artists.

“Grotesque is an art form in terms of clown, and Norris really uses that to push it to the extreme,” says Burns. “Even if you’re laughing out of shock value, or laughing out of recognition, he’s using that technique for us to listen differently. You have to be jolted into something. A live performance is so that you can have that. You do listen differently because there are other people there. We know that a husband might not laugh at certain things if his wife is sitting beside him. And lots of women coming in groups… that makes for an interesting audience.”

The actress and teacher is interested in why we are drawn to the grotesque, only to chastise ourselves for looking at it.

“[Norris is] asking us bigger questions, like why do we pillarize these people as if they’re the only people that ever have sexually deviant behaviour? Why do we have the right to be so moral or to cast such moral judgement? And the extreme situation of their public life makes it funny, so we can stand apart from them.”

Conflicting shades of artistic expression have always interested Burns. She encourages audiences and artists alike to embrace awkward feelings before overanalysing them. She says it’s a natural part of growing, particularly for young people interested in theatre.

“If someone speaks to movement or my body rather than my head, I’m in heaven. When I was 11 years old I went off to theatre school on Saturday morning. We had incredible teachers. That had a huge amount to do with my sense of what makes it good or what you need to feel good. The difference between creative work and formula work. We were given so many interesting things to do.”

As she progressed through the ranks of the Vancouver Playhouse following university, theatre education reps sought Burns’s approachable, natural dramatic instincts to reach younger audience members.

“We were doing a production of The Lady from the Sea. I think it was my very first year of acting for the company. One of the women who does the school coordinating and marketing said ‘I just can’t get any teacher to bring kids to this play because they think that [Henrik Ibsen] is just beyond, beyond…’ And I said ‘That’s really too bad because there are two wonderful parts [for] teenage girls [depicting] what they’re struggling with and kids could really relate to that.’”

Burns offered to speak to teachers in the community herself, and suddenly the bookings came flooding in. And despite numerous accolades along the way (two Genie awards, two Gemini awards and two Dora awards, to name a few), she has continued to focus on expanding the theatre world as a welcoming place for young people. Burns co-founded Soulpepper Theatre Company as well as its youth outreach component, and embracing childhood curiosity as a constructive pathway to adult passion became a central part of Burns’s projects. One of her earliest outreach programs with Soulpepper emerged when a group of fourth-graders wanted to see Hamlet. She says children are our best examples of looking to “the strange” in seeking personal development.

“A teacher at my kids’ school asked me to do Hamlet, because they were going to go see Paul in Hamlet, these little kids. I said to her, ‘You can’t take kids in grade four to go see Hamlet.’ And she said, ‘Yes we can. You’ll just introduce it to them.’”

Through Soulpepper, the Hamlet program became a mainstay in the school for several years.

“I remember one class we did around Hamlet,” says Paula Wing, resident artist at Soulpepper and Burns’s co-founder of many youth outreach projects, including ‘Hamlet for Grade 4′. “We had music playing as we entered. The teacher had been instructed to get the students in a circle and wait for us. We entered slowly, ceremoniously. We were working with actor Michael Blake and he entered wearing a cloak and carrying a sword. Martha brought the first student to the centre of the circle, where Michael stood. She gently helped her kneel down and Michael touched the sword to each of her shoulders. ‘Rise, Lady Knight,’ Michael said. Each child in turn knelt to be knighted. The whole thing happened in a reverent silence. Afterward Martha addressed them as soldiers of Denmark. You could have heard kleenex fall.”

Burns says she’s still startled when people are drawn to her confidence (“I’m not a very confident person; I’m always amazed at people who are sure that they can do stuff, because I’m never sure”), but her willingness to inhabit her own vulnerability has made her invaluable to her colleagues.

“She really listens to you,” says Domesticated co-star, Vanessa Smythe. “As a performer and also as a person. She listens so completely. She’s beautiful, and fierce. It’s a very special pleasure getting to work with her.”

Burns will be working with youth again in the coming year, and she is in her fifth year of teaching acting at the National Theatre School.

“I am working with the physical world of the play and the space. That’s one of the things I’m really passionate about, is how to make sure that becomes an actor’s concentration really early in their study.”

Burns encourages parents and young people to seek out theatre education through Soulpepper, Young People’s Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille, and never to be afraid of approaching the administration team at these theatres. She insists that youth are our best guide to expansive views of creativity.

“It’s really easy to get kids to relate to so-called adult drama, you just have to give them some landmarks and introduce them to the world of the play… the relationship between young people and artists is a very natural one.”

In beautiful contrast to Judy’s Bill, Paul Gross’s admiration for his wife is far from distorted.

“As a teacher, a mentor and a performer, Martha’s talent is rare and radiant and relentlessly generous,” says Gross. “How she does what she does is difficult to describe and impossible to forget.”

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