George Joyce and Ted Follows
A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters is worth the 15 year wait
In addition to commercials, television series and film, George Joyce's credits span throughout Ontario ( Drayton Entertainment - Big River, Tribal Productions - Death of a Salesman) and The Maritimes - Stephenville Festival of the Arts, and Neptune Theatre, including Cyrano de Bergerac with Gordon Pinsent and so much more.
When Louise Reynolds asked Ted Follows to do Love Letters Follows wanted George Joyce to direct. Joyce was thrilled because he was 'in love with the play' and had wanted to do it for 15 years. Follows and Reynolds had the confidence that Joyce 'could take the play and refine it for us.' Joyce calls Follows 'an instiitution' in Canadian theatre having helped to kickstart many companies over 60 years in theatre.
"That’s my value." jokes Follows. " I go and do a show and everybody says "Ohhh, God, we can do better than that, and then they form another theatre."
"I did five years in the 50’s and three years in the 70’s at The Stratford Festival. I worked with Jason Robards (another Love Letters player) We became friends when he played Hotspur in Henry IV. I played Lord Douglas, a friend on Hotspur’s side, so we became close buddies ( Michael Langham’s season). I also worked with Brian Bedford in A Winter’s Tale, and did Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid – where I played the guy who killed Billy the Kid, one of my fave shows at Stratford."
Joyce, in addition to directing, is a former English teacher, which explains the fondness he has for this A.R. Gurney piece.
"We tend to, when we commit words to paper- I remember a very early lesson that my mum taught me about being careful about what I put down on paper- because it has permanence. Younger people who have been familiar only with emails and text messaging may not get that statement, but we have heard recently in the news about emails that have gone astray, gotten into the wrong hands and that’s created a hullabaloo. We tend to want to put on our best face when we’re writing. There’s a difference in the language. It’s less colloquial. There is a joy in writing that many people have where they actually begin to experiment and play with the language a little bit and use words that they may not be prone to using in everyday speech and that’s why there is this flavour in these letters.
But there is also a wonderful warmth that comes through, and that’s the relationship that develops between these two characters. It is a love story. They are love letters in a way but here are two people who never really get together.
They are star crossed in a way. We have the sense that they each want something from the other that they themselves find missing in themselves. They live parallel or separate lives and at various points in the length of the relationship they come together. Their lives touch each other and intersect a little bit and then they go off in their own directions again and they never really do end up together in that sense. The relationship is fraught with problems and we as an audience in this piece – so beautifully written – have a sense of being almost voyeurs – because this is a private correspondence and we get to see both of them as they are revealing their hearts through the words that they create."
George Joyce has a cameo role in an upcoming TV drama on the life of Robert Louis Stevenson and appears in Terrance Odette's Sleeping Dogs
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