This month at Blue Bridge Theatre, the world-renowned Victorian-era Christmas story A Christmas Carol will be told in the same fashion that it was originally presented: with one actor playing the cast of over 20 characters. But actor Sanjay Talwar is no stranger to taking on a role where he plays multiple people.
“I actually did a play called Helen’s Necklace where I played five different characters,” says Talwar. “The way that worked was there was one person playing the main character and I basically played everyone else. I don’t have anybody to lean on when I make mistakes, and it can get lonely in the dressing room. But it’s just a different kind of experience.”
And it’s a rewarding experience at that. Talwar was attracted to this role because of his longtime fondness of A Christmas Carol; he views it as a testament to true theatre.
“I knew the story from when I was very little, and I had performed in the play playing one character before,” he says. “Having played more than one character in a play with lots of actors, this just seemed like a totally different talent, something that was really fascinating. It just goes back to real basics of theatre, which is storytelling, and seeing if you can tell a story for a period of time and keep people with you.”
After having livestreamed the play last year, Talwar is most excited about being back in the presence of a live audience. He was in the middle of a two-week rehearsal when he spoke to Nexus, and he’s eager to get back to the theatre for the show’s first live performance.
“The audience is such a major character in every play that it was interesting doing the play without that character, and so it’ll be interesting to see what that character does to the story.”
The story’s timeline spans over the course of Ebenezer Scrooge’s life; Talwar appreciates how it’s easy to empathize with the character.
“I think people have different kinds of reactions to the character depending on where they are in their life,” he says. “I know I had a different reaction to the story when I was a child versus when I was an adult versus when I was, you know, relatively up there in years. You have a different perspective. As Scrooge walks through the various ages of his life, I think everybody can identify with a different one.”
Talwar says he’s looking forward to the reopening of live theatre in Canada. Everyone was impacted in different ways by the isolation of the last year, but one thing it seems to have reinforced in people is the importance of communal experiences.
“It’s an exciting time to go back and revisit the experience of live performance, of things that you can’t get from the movies, or from television. It’s not that one’s better than the other, it’s just different, and the experience and the contact of live theatre is something that I think we don’t even realize how much we missed it until we go back to it.”
Talwar—who admits that he was surprised at how emotional it was to return to the theatre and discover just how much he missed it—says that he admires Blue Bridge’s devotion to the tradition of theatre.
“Blue Bridge has been really wonderful about keeping things going in a real Canadian theatrical tradition, so it’s just a bunch of artists coming together and working on telling a story.”
A Christmas Carol
Various times, Tuesday, December 7 to Sunday, December 19
Various prices, Blue Bridge Theatre
bluebridgetheatre.ca