Dion Johnstone as Tom Robinson
A Cool Kid Cast, a Dummy Arm, and Peter Donaldson as Atticus Finch
Dion Johnstone was dazzled by the work of the To Kill A Mockingbird cast from Abergail-Winter Culliford (Scout) & Thomas Murray (Jem) to Peter Donaldson (Atticus Finch)
In Part Four of this Five-Part series: Budding Actors and Actresses, take note! If someday you find yourself working with younger actors, Dion Johnstone has some inspiring words. Also, how does one work on stage when your character has a handicap? Dion and Mockingbird director Susan H. Schulman found an innovative answer to this problem.
What was it like working with the kids? They were all so solid in their portrayals.
The entire young company especially Abergail, Thomas and Spencer (Dill) are astonishing, absolutely astonishing. One of the things our director, Susan, was great at doing was creating an environment. She would be very strict about what she wanted and where it needed to happen, where the bars needed to be. But how you got there was your own business and she wouldn’t get in the way of whatever your particular creative process was.
By doing that, it opened the playground for the kids to play so they knew what they needed to achieve, but they never felt uncomfortable about their own abilities or how they were going about doing it so the work and how rapidly they grew into the characters, was just amazing. We'd sit there in these rehearsals just watching them – I had tears pouring down my face. I cannot believe I am seeing this. That, in turn, really effected the whole company and gave us the permission to go to those places too. As Tom, I was terrified. How was I going to pull this off? If they’re pulling it off, well, I can pull it off.
You and the kids did make the audience cry and as well as being such a tough role, Tom Robinson, has a handicap. Did you and Susan choreograph that?
No, we had a meeting at the beginning of the rehearsal process and I asked Susan what are we going to do? Are we going to build a prosthetic arm or put on makeup... how are we going to do that? She said we can certainly look at that but I thought it might be interesting to just play with your own physicality and see what you come up with.
So I just started working with different ways of holding my hand and that seemed to work. Then it became a real discipline of being able to hold the hand in a crooked position but not put any energy into it. I found to balance that, I started using the right hand a lot more to express myself especially when I am seated on the witness stand, and that helped to create the illusion of one arm being visually dead. We thought we didn’t need to do anything with prosthetics or make up. We left it all in the acting of it and hoped that the audience would suspend their disbelief and there wouldn't be an issue.
No strain on the arm muscle... Carpal tunnel?
No, I am always loosening it up and I do my arm exercises before going on.
Your cast mate, Peter Donaldson… this role must have been so hard for him too, because everyone immediately associates Atticus Finch with Gregory Peck.
It’s funny. I had seen the movie when I was a kid, so I had vague impressions of what the film was all about and what Gregory Peck did, which was great because I didn’t go back to the film at all when I heard we were doing this show. Then I read the book for the first time.
I have only seen the film once, and I not surprised that you didn’t go back to the film.
But I hadn’t read the book at that time, so I read it this time purely with Pete Donaldson in mind and that became the voice in my head even before we started rehearsing; it was just right up Pete’s alley. I couldn’t wait to see what he would do with it. He’s been amazing. For me as an actor, playing off him and also being a young actor who has the opportunity to learn from the great actors who have been in this company for a long time; Pete is just, by virtue of working with him, a great mentor. It’s the perfect relationship, between Atticus and Tom and I have learned so much just being in his presence and playing off him. I am eternally grateful for that opportunity.
To Kill a Mockingbird continues at Stratford's Avon Theatre to Oct 27.
