Enjoy this quick bonus episode of Life in Stages in which Joel Greenberg makes an exciting announcement.

When Ron was performing in the Studio 180-HGJT production of My Name is Asher Lev, I was struck by the fact that audience members refused to believe that he wasn’t as Jewish as the role he’d played onstage. But that is precisely what defines Ron Lea, an actor who so completely inhabits the characters he plays, whether on stage, on film or television.

In our conversation, Ron walks us through his professional and personal life with the simple, straightforward approach that he seems to take with life.

Ron’s professional ‘road trip’ from Montreal to Toronto to Los Angeles to Vancouver and back to Toronto is told without missing the hard bits. How does a family with twin infants relocate and then relocate again in a foreign country? When the work takes you away from your family for months at a time – in one year when you see your family for no more than a few days in total – how does the family negotiate its own way forward?

Sitting down with Ron while he revisited the stages of his life was a real honour.

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Of all my guests this first season series, I have known Janelle Hutchison the longest. We met in the early 70’s when we were cast as understudies for the cabaret revue, What’s a Nice Country Like You Doing in a State Like This? I was hired to understudy Martin Short and Janelle covered for Andrea Martin.

Janelle has long since added considerably to her professional CV – perhaps most celebrated of her stage appearances was as Mme. Thenardier in the Canadian production of Les Miserables. Janelle is comfortable and engaging as she explores her years of musical and non-musical theatre work, her screenwriting, her success in television commercials and her shift to film and television casting as well as administration at the Stratford Festival.

The culmination of Janelle’s eclectic professional life must be in her management of the Tisch School’s Musical Theatre programme at NYU. It’s fascinating to learn that the sum of all past projects, credits and accomplishments could be synthesized into a New York-based academic setting.

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Sterling Jarvis began his performing life as a singer – bands, receptions of all kinds. But that wasn’t how I met him. In fact, I first worked with Sterling on The Overwhelming, a play about the Rwandan genocide – not exactly The Lion King or We Will Rock You, the two theatre productions he had just completed.

Sterling discusses his rather atypical career path -- touring with The Book of Mormon and his subsequent run in the Broadway production and then the sudden lockdown in 2020. What happens to an actor, to all actors, when the work just stops dead? How does a transplanted Toronto-based actor cope in New York City when the lights have been turned off?

Sterling also reveals that as the father of a child, herself an aspiring actor-singer, he has had an active role in her professional development.

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Early in my conversation with Tracy Michailidis, as we discuss professional training, she jokingly refers to herself as ‘an impostor’ because, rather than attending a conservatory programme, she chose a liberal arts education. And as we chat further, Tracy details the depth of study, the vitality and shared passions of her cohort, friends she has worked with and maintains to this day. All joking aside, it’s abundantly clear that Tracy hasn’t been hobbled by her decision.

We discuss Tracy’s early career, when she was cast in a leading role at the Charlottetown Festival. She reveals what being in the touring production of Beauty and the Beast taught her and, later, what playing in the Broadway production added to the experience of living and working in New York.

Apart from our career-focussed chatting, it is abundantly clear that for Tracy, both personally and professionally, her love of, and commitment to, her family is her grounding place, the foundation that frees her to dream without restraint.

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It’s hard to believe that Michael Healey, playwright of The Drawer Boy and The Master Plan (and several original and adapted projects in between), spent the first ten years of his career as an actor before writing for the stage became his principal passion. Which is not to say that he gave up his acting career.

On the contrary, I first met and worked with Michael on the Studio 180 Theatre production of Stuff Happens, in 2008 and 2009, and a few years later on Clybourne Park.

Michael’s wholly candid and generous description of his career, his insecurities and his insights into a profession beset by constant challenges is as refreshing as it is entertaining.

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Sarah Orenstein was a touchstone for me during the pandemic lockdown. We’d meet outdoors, drink coffee and inflict ourselves and our anxieties on each other. We also found time to laugh at the insanity of the world around us. Sarah works, and has worked, at every major theatre in the country, including both the Stratford and Shaw Festivals.

We met in 2008, when Sarah joined the Studio 180 Theatre production of Stuff Happens, one of those watershed moments that we cherish. And among the gifts of that project is my enduring friendship with Sarah.

Sarah is fiercely dedicated to collaboration, an artist whose true love is the process of an ensemble. Not surprisingly, she dedicates a great deal of time to mentoring young artists in the craft of acting.

And let’s not forget Sarah’s love of baking and gardening.

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Meeting Jeff Miller is a guaranteed good time. Possessed of a great sense of humour and delighting in the absurdities of life, Jeff is a model of the actor’s playbook: you commit passionately to each project and when the acting work isn’t coming fast and furious, you commit passionately to teaching theatre and a wide range of life-sustaining jobs. But in spite of the inevitable dry periods, Jeff’s resilience is inspiring.

Jeff and I first worked together in the early 90’s, and more recently with Studio 180 Theatre’s The Laramie Project, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook and My Night with Reg.

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