Rainbow Stage closes curtains on diamond anniversary with Sister Act

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This article was published 12/08/2015 (4009 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you’ve been paying attention during his four-year tenure as artistic director at Rainbow Stage, you may have noticed Ray Hogg has been deliberately filling out his musical choruses with performers of all sizes and ages.

With the final offering of Rainbow’s 60th anniversary season, Hogg is celebrating diversity with Sister Act, the stage version of the hit 1992 movie starring Whoopi Goldberg that grossed US$230 million worldwide. The convent comedy stars a black actress as a Philly club singer-cum-nun, and the hero is a black man — a demographic that has been stereotyped south of the border as a criminal element.

Hogg knows stereotypes: he is a black man, a gay man and a gay parent.

“I spend a lot of my life as a visible minority,” says the former Montrealer. “It’s not a cause of mine. It’s my life.”

The former dancer would like to see that life reflected on his stage in Sister Act, where the 24-member cast ranges in age from fresh-faced 19-year-old Connor Coughlin to retired teacher Joanne Parker Gibson, 69.

“I have children, and I want other children — whether skinny, disadvantaged, fat, black, white or identifying as other — to see themselves represented on our stage,” he says, relaxing recently in the sea of yellow seats under the dome in Kildonan Park. “I have been quietly doing that.”

Part of Sister Act’s appeal to Hogg was the perspective and casting diversity it presented. It is rare to see the five-time Tony-nominated songfest performed in Canada, other than a couple of forays into Ontario by an American touring production in 2012-13.

The musical’s 1970s-era story follows Deloris Van Cartier, a showgirl who witnesses her Mafioso boyfriend commit murder. She takes refuge in a cloistered convent for her own safety and breaks the shy, naive nuns out of their self-imposed shells and teaches the sisters to praise the Lord, disco-style. The music is penned by Alan Menken, the eight-time Oscar-winning composer best known for blockbuster Disney animated musicals The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.

A rousing musical about a female protagonist that focuses on black characters and requires a large female ensemble appealed to Hogg on all kinds of levels. He brought back his former castmates from Dreamgirls (Manitoba Theatre Centre, 2008): Saccha Dennis as Deloris and Aadin Church as policeman Eddie.

Female performers — who usually take a backseat to their male colleagues in prominence and number — are in the majority in Sister Act.

“We were staging the curtain call and I said, ‘Sorry, fellows, but this is a women’s show, so you all will step back and they will all come forward for the final bow, because we don’t get to see that enough.’ ”

Hogg, whose performing credits include playing Macavity in Cats more than 500 times, moderated a panel on diversity in theatre in New York City last year and has been speaking recently to the Rainbow board about it and how it has been a personal priority of his for some time.

“I told them it is time to proclaim it — to let people know it’s not accidental, it’s on purpose,” he says.

For Dennis, a 30-something performer from Montreal, Sister Act is a rare opportunity to be front and centre.

“There aren’t a lot of shows with a leading lady who is black,” she says, during a recent interview. “Those opportunities are very few, so I am thrilled.”

Portraying a nun in the ’70s is not that much of a reach for Dennis. After high school, she lived with nuns for a few months, after which she headed to acting classes at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont. She was also born in the 1970s and that era still speaks loudly to her.

“I think my soul belongs to the ’70s,” says Dennis, who toured North America for a year in the jukebox musical We Will Rock You. “The vibe, the music and the tone was really cool. I loved listening to the Jackson 5, Donna Summer and Thelma Houston. That music I will appreciate forever.”

Dennis thinks the play’s gospel music will resonate with the audience, especially Raise Your Voice, the number Deloris gets the sister choir to sing for the first time.

“The sound that comes out of those girls is unbelievable,” she says. “Gospel music is uplifting and really joyous.

“That point is a game-changer. If you had doubts about the show before, you won’t have them anymore, because you’re hooked.”

Through music, the repressed nuns find their true voice. Hogg says it is an important message in 2015 for people to use their voices to speak up about things that are important to them, and take action.

“At the end of the play, the group of nuns go from women who talk to women who do,” Hogg says. “I think that’s very of-the-moment. These are times to take action for things we believe in.”

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca