When I call actor Leni Parker over FaceTime on the Sunday night of her opening weekend, I’m grateful for her flexibility. We’ve had to do a little bit of rescheduling and she’s rightfully exhausted: her castmate had to be replaced last minute for medical reasons, and in true the-show-must-go-on fashion, the company has been pulling 10-hour days to rehearse. Despite all of this, Parker is gracious through her tiredness and eager to discuss her creative process; her storied career in Montreal’s Anglophone and Francophone theatre scenes; and Kisses Deep, the Centaur Theatre production in which she’s currently starring.
To prepare for our interview, I was able to see a preview of Kisses Deep, directed by Eda Holmes. Newly translated into English by Linda Gaboriau, Michel Marc Bouchard’s play follows Béatrice, a hardened seamstress, as she and her teenage son Hugo prepare for Béatrice’s trial for assault charges.
Parker described preparing for the role of Béatrice, an emotionally complex character whom her community accuses of being an abusive parent, as a sort of investigation — one that involved “reading the script over and over and waking up in the night with another piece of the puzzle solved.
“I feel like I’m still learning how to do this,” she said. “I’m learning to be the detective that I need to be.”
She explained that even small discoveries end up having an impact on her performance. For example, she realized that in this production both she and Kevin Raymond, who plays her son Hugo, are left-handed. Yves Jacques, who plays Yves Saint Laurent (yes, that one) is also a leftie, meaning all three actors portraying fashion designer characters were able to explore how they move through the space similarly, from the way they brandish scissors to how they pin garments.
“Show is great,” she told me. “We love the show, but I love rehearsal.”
I first met Parker earlier this year, at a staged reading in which she performed. And I was already aware of her prolific acting career, which includes a decade of work with the theatre and dance company Pigeons International and numerous credits across theatre, film, television, and video games. It was around that time that I was accepted into Page Turn, a program that offers early-career critics and arts writers mentorship and publishing opportunities, so when a mutual friend suggested Parker would be open to an interview, it felt like a great way to take the next steps in covering Montreal’s arts scene.
“[Kisses Deep’s] language is heightened, it’s a bit of a puzzle, sometimes it’s awkward in the mouth, but it’s for a reason,” Parker explained of working with the script. “It’s on purpose. That’s challenging, but you fit it. They become your words.”
Although a lot of my expectations of the production were tied to the script — Bouchard’s 1987 play Lilies is one of my favourites that I’ve read — I found it impressive how Holmes’ staging leans on other elements of storytelling. Sébastien Dionne’s costuming is a particular standout that punctuates Béatrice’s character arc, replacing her initial drab outfit with a tuxedo that’s bold, shirtless, and decidedly unmotherly. Hugo creates this outfit, and I felt it brought Béatrice closer to her own image of herself: someone more cultured and liberated than her small-town surroundings.
When asked whether she feels protective toward her character, Parker was hesitant to say yes.
“More than protect them, you’ve got to embrace them,” Parker said of the relationship between actors and their characters, adding that it was a disservice for performers to show anything less than their character’s full, nuanced selves. Described by a family friend of Parker’s who saw the show as the “scariest mother” they had ever seen, Parker instead views Béatrice as someone whose protectiveness over her son pushes her to extreme behaviour. And she admitted that this feeling of protectiveness toward the character of Hugo is something she shares with Béatrice.
“[Kevin] made it very easy,” she told me of the bond she feels with her fellow actor. “I step on stage and that’s my son.”
Parker added that the reward of the rehearsals is both performers now know their characters well enough that they can “play” together on stage, making new discoveries and finding new moments.
Parker considers relationship-building to be a skill she’s built over her time in the industry, and one that helped make the last-minute casting adjustment as smooth as possible. Although she expressed regret at initially being unable to perform with Alice Pascual, who was originally cast as Maryse, she was quick to call her new castmate Amelia Sargisson a “wonder” for coming into rehearsals off-book with just over a day to prepare. (Pascual would end up returning to the production for its final three performances.) For me, as a viewer, this replacement felt seamless — every performer offers an idiosyncratic, lived-in performance, and there are no gaps in chemistry onstage.
As Parker put it: “We’ve unearthed everything, and haven’t left a stone unturned.”
Perhaps ironically, I left the interview feeling the opposite way: that I’d need to keep Parker on the phone for many more hours to truly unpack her career and approach to creation.
When I thanked her at the end of the call, I meant it: speaking to an artist so articulate and thoughtful about her artistic process was a real treat for my first Page Turn piece. I might still be in the early days of the program, but this experience has set the bar high.
Kisses Deep ran at Centaur Theatre from November 26 to December 14 . More information is available here.
Megan Hunt wrote this review as part of Page Turn, a professional development network for emerging arts writers, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and administered by Neworld Theatre.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Megan Hunt
Megan Hunt is a Montreal-based writer, editor and dramaturge. Her work has been featured in outlets such as This Magazine, Culture Days and IN Magazine, as well as festivals including the Women’s Work Festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She is one of the writers selected for the first cohort of Page Turn, a program facilitated by Neworld Theatre to support emerging voices in criticism and arts writing.
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