Clowning duo from The 39 Steps returns to GFT in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

Isaiah Kolundzic and Kiana Woo are two clowns with two very different creative processes.

For Kolundzic, it all starts with the voice and then that informs the body. For Woo, the opposite is true. Once she finds the physicality of a character, the voice emerges from there. 

The two artists met during last year’s production of The 39 Steps at Scarborough’s Guild Festival Theatre (GFT) and immediately clicked. They played so well together on the first day of rehearsal that Woo recalls assistant stage manager Leah Wilton saying it seemed like they’d known each other for years.

Woo said everybody who came and talked to her after the show last year was like, “‘The thing that was so great about you and Isaiah together is you approached physical comedy so extremely differently in a way that somehow worked really well together.’”

She and Kolundzic are back at GFT this summer for another whirlwind, four-person show, playing a combined total of 20 characters in director Tyler J. Seguin’s new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. 

The show centres Catherine Morland (played by Georgia Findlay), a young woman so captivated with Gothic literature that she starts to imagine the fantastical things she’s read about — like white knights coming out of nowhere to save the damsel in distress — crashing into her own life. It’s a coming-of-age story where Catherine must ultimately learn that “life is not a novel and [she is] not a heroine,” as she says in the script. 

Findlay is the only actor who plays just one character in this production. (Andrew Prashad, the fourth member of the ensemble, also jumps in and out of multiple roles at rapid speed.) She remains onstage the entire time as a flurry of real and imagined characters swirl around her.

Send in the clowns.

“As actors, it’s a delight to play between fantasy and reality,” said Woo, who trained in a Canadian mask-based style of clown, known as the Pochinko method, at the University of Alberta with Mump and Smoot’s Michael Kennard

“Oh, it’s the best,” added Kolundzic, who received his training from the University of Windsor and Chicago’s Steppenwolf Academy. “You have so much license to be so silly. There are so many stupid jokes in this show in the absolute best way.”

One of the techniques Woo learned during her time studying under Kennard was how to characterize colours. “Oh this sounds so woo-woo,” she said, “but you, like, look into the pond to retrieve a colour and figure out what your gesture is and what the sound is and how it moves.” She said that Dorothy, the housekeeper, is definitely a dark green. 

“I feel like I am a squid right now,” Woo joked, while beginning to embody Dorothy and make undulating motions with her hands. “I always had goblin hands when I did that colour back in school. And so like, really switching into the body, she kind of hunches over and she’s got a bit of these weird twitchy paws and skeleton witch fingers, and that makes sense for her.”

Woo also plays the two foil best friends, Isabella Thorpe and Eleanor Tilney. “It’s really fun to play two young ladies who are out in society, versus a horrifying, crotchety housekeeper who you think might kill you,” she said, adding that the more connected she feels to her physical body, the easier it is to connect with each character emotionally. 

Kolundzic finds his way into all the characters he plays by connecting them to an animal. “What I like to do, especially in comedy,” he said, “is give certain adjectives and certain states of being to these animals and then I try to kind of replicate that in my body and in my voice.” General Tilney, for example, was inspired by a very overconfident sheep. And Mrs. Allen is a hawk-ish bird with a really long nose. 

“I don’t even know if it’s a real bird,” he admitted.

“It doesn’t matter,” assured Woo.

“But in my head it’s a bird with a really long nose,” continued Kolundzic, “and she’s got little spectacles and sort of looks around.” These kinds of images serve as points of reference and help give him the ability to switch between so many characters so quickly.

“What I love about watching Isaiah work is that there’s so much thought and care,” said Woo. “I find that I don’t often recognize Isaiah when he’s in a specific character, which is a really fun experience to have as a scene partner. He’ll drop into something and really surprise me.”

Kolundzic admires how “wonderfully intuitive” Woo is with her comedy. “She’s able to feel when the comedic rhythm is cresting or falling and very easily and succinctly match it or find a beautiful crescendo that will always have me laughing,” he said. “She’s so good at creating character bodies and making very specific comedic choices that as an acting partner I’m able to complement so easily because I can see the opposite. I can see what would add on to her joke.” 

It’s an ideal clown match — two artists using different but complementary skill sets that mesh well together and bring out the best in each other’s work.

“You’re more of the clown than I am,” Kolundzic said to Woo, before jumping onstage to resume rehearsal in Guild Park and Gardens’ Greek Amphitheatre. 

Woo fired back: “Ooooh I don’t think that’s true.”

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey: A Most Horrid Mystery runs from August 6 to 23 at Guild Festival Theatre. More information is available here.

Guild Festival Theatre is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Magan Carty

Magan Carty is an actor turned journalist whose passion for the arts runs deep. They spent over a decade performing in theatre productions across Canada and are now working as a writer and producer for CBC Radio’s flagship national program, The Current. Magan lives in Toronto with their twin black cats, Juno and Lenny.

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