New GCTC chief takes helm, offers bright outlook for future

By Eric Glaude
The Great Canadian Theatre Company’s new artistic director has big plans for the GCTC, including attracting new audiences, expanding the theatre and creating a spring festival.

Lorne Pardy, who got the job in August, has been learning from the theatre’s former artistic director, Micheline Chevrier, who left the position in January.

He says audiences can expect something new when he announces next season’s schedule March 20.
The six all-Canadian plays will feature a premiere commissioned by the GCTC and an English adaptation of a French-Canadian play.

“I think Micheline and I have some similar tastes but we also have some differences,” says Pardy between sips of coffee.

“Micheline is French-Canadian, I’m English-Canadian. I’m gay, so you might see plays on gay subject matter.”

Other changes may include the Gladstone building itself.

“We are thinking about buying the garage next door and using the property to expand the theatre,” he says. “This is a little small, even for a four-man play.”

Pardy, 35, has acted and directed in the Festival Antigonish and will return to the Nova Scotia festival this summer.

He says he hopes to setup a similar spring festival for new plays at the GCTC. But he says his first priority is getting to know the theatre’s audience better.

“We’ve been inserting surveys into the programs for the last few shows to find out who the audience is now and what the ratio is of older to younger audience members and what they like to see,” says Pardy.
Born in Labrador, Pardy has spent the past few years as co-artistic director of Nova Scotia’s Mulgrave Road Co-op.

More recently, he served as the associate artistic director of British Columbia’s Western Canada Theatre Company.

He says taking the GCTC job in Ottawa was important for his career.

“It was the right time for me to go from being an associate to an artistic director and it was the right company for me,” he says.

“I spent a lot of the last five years developing new plays and working with writers and the opportunity to come in and get to do that with an all-Canadian mandate again was perfect.”

In 1992 he appeared on the GCTC stage when he toured Canada as Joey Smallwood in Tom Cahill’s one-man-play The Only Living Father.

He also played a small part in the upcoming film New Waterford Girls.

GCTC manager Nancy Oakley says Pardy’s travels as a director and an actor in theatre, television and film keep him connected to the rest of the country.

“He’s done extensive touring across the country and as such he brings a wealth of knowledge about Canada to the position,” says Oakley.

Kate Hurman was Pardy’s classmate in the mid-1980s when they both attended Montreal’s National Theatre School and now works at the National Arts Centre.

She says Pardy is a good fit for the job.

“I think he has a terrific sense of the theatrical,” says Hurman. “His knowledge is immense and he works from an actor’s point of view. He is an actor first and then a director.”

Pardy takes another sip of coffee and says he is enjoying the job so far.

“I’m having a hoot,” he says. “There’s a lot of pressure to a job like this but I’m not feeling overwhelmed by it.

“I’m really enjoying being able to put a season together and being able to support artists,” he says.
“That’s the biggest thing for me.”