The eve of mourning and martyrdom

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This article was published 16/02/2024 (942 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Long before she and Ray Strachan were cast as the two stars of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre production of The Mountaintop — an imagined version of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final night before his assassination in April 1968 — Cherissa Richards manifested the dream roles into existence.

“I sent (artistic director) Kelly Thornton a picture of the cover of the play, and I wrote, ‘Starring Ray Strachan and Cherissa Richards, directed by (former RMTC associate artistic director) Audrey Dwyer,” laughs Richards.

Sometimes, it’s worth it to shoot your shot.

In 2021, that trio teamed up for a digital production of Pulitzer-winning playwright Katori Hall’s two-hander for RMTC.

Three years later, Strachan and Richards are back in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, recreated on the John Hirsch Mainstage under the direction of Hazel Venzon, the assistant director on that digital production.

For Richards and Strachan, a proper live staging of The Mountaintop is well-deserved manna from heaven.

It’s an opportunity for the veteran Black actors to own the city’s largest stage while portraying layered, dynamic and endlessly challenging characters: the legendarily verbose MLK Jr. and his sparring partner, Camae, a fictionalized motel maid Richards calls “one of the most incredible Black female voices in a character I’ve ever read.”

It won’t be the first time the pair have worked on a production scripted by a Black female playwright: They acted together in the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s 2019 production of Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel and in a reading of Trouble In Mind, the Alice Childress race-in-showbiz satire Richards directed last season for RMTC.

But for the better part of a decade, both actors lobbied heavily to bring The Mountaintop to Winnipeg, understanding its power as historical metafiction and as a piece of theatre that centred Black voices and the depth of their experiences, as opposed to relegating them to a footnote.

It’s an experience Strachan knows can be a rarity.

“To have this role is sincerely a dream role in a dream play. I’ve wanted to do this for a decade in front of family and friends in this building, which has been like a theatre school for me,” says the actor, who previously starred in The Mountaintop at Rosebud, Alta.’s School of the Arts and at Edmonton’s Shadow Theatre.

Strachan, 45, didn’t go to theatre school. While earning a degree in recreation management at the University of Manitoba, he actually struggled to command a room. “I was a really horrible public speaker,” he says.

So he took his first theatre classes, and then quickly fell in with the U of M’s Black Hole Theatre Company, where taking part in a production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead changed his life.

“I fell in love with the process of creating a story with other people,” he says.

He decided to go for it, to be an actor.

After finishing up at U of M, Strachan had a string of what he calls beginner’s luck, getting cast in Prairie Theatre Exchange’s touring company for its annual Robert Munsch show and in a co-production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at RMTC.

That trip to the asylum was a major learning experience for Strachan, who got to work with Winnipeg stage veterans such as Stan Lesk, Jon Ted Wynne and Frank Adamson.

“They took me under their wing, showed me the dedication it takes, no matter how big your role is, to be present in the room,” says Strachan, who was cast as a mostly silent orderly.

“If you know the (Milos Forman) movie, or the play, there are two orderlies, both Black, with the same amount of time onstage, together a lot,” recalls Strachan. “The director actually did not cast who was playing which orderly, which might not seem like a big deal, but as an actor, you want to know what character you’re friggin’ playing.”

That experience, plus the eventual sting of rejection many actors face, led Strachan to quit the business, his mental health flagging. He’d often look ahead at local theatre seasons and not see any roles he felt he had a fair shot at playing, which hurt.

He started working at Goodlife Fitness, putting his degree to use. But when he got a call to audition for a touring production with MTYP in 2015, he jumped. “That call came at the perfect time,” says Strachan, who roomed on the road with his old U of M stage manager Matt Lagace. “Having those nights in a motel, watching playoff hockey, packing your stuff, doing laundry, it made me fall in love with it again.”

Soon, Strachan was getting leading roles in shows such as The Whipping Man at Winnipeg Jewish Theatre. His lead role won him the inaugural Evie award for best performance by a leading actor in Winnipeg theatre.

“He crafted a character well beyond his years that was filled with gravitas and emotional depth that resonated with audiences on a very visceral level,” says former WJT artistic director Ari Weinberg, who directed the production. “It’s a performance I still think about often and still leaves me in awe.”

Strachan’s time away from the stage reminded him to savour every moment in front of an audience. “As an actor, you never know when your last gig is. That might sound like a cliché or like BS, but you don’t,” he says.

It’s an idea that figures directly into The Mountaintop, which follows the 39-year-old King to his Memphis motel right after delivering his Mountaintop speech — a masterpiece of extemporaneous public speaking.

“This is an MLK behind closed doors, a man who’s broken and tired,” says Strachan. “When he’s not on the pedestal, not on the pulpit, he’s a regular human being like everyone else, with faults and flaws.

“As an actor, to be able to show that in a character people think they know, that’s a meaty role right there, without having to play into the stereotypes or the caricature that everyone sees in the media.”

It’s a character Strachan has known all his life.

“As a kid, my dad had a coffee-table book with MLK’s face on the sleeve,” he says. “So whenever I was lying on the floor watching Tom and Jerry or wrestling, MLK’s face was right there.”

“He has been in my life as far back as I can remember.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com