A Chorus Line lead coping with terminal illness by embracing her passion

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This article was published 15/03/2018 (3100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The 1975 Broadway musical A Chorus Line is, as Broadway musicals go, an egalitarian piece of work. 

Just about every member of its cast has their own big song and their own time in the spotlight. 

But if any character emerges as a de facto star, it must be Cassie. The former Broadway star auditions for the chorus line for the simple reason that she has no further options after her acting career has run dry. In her featured song, The Magic and the Mirror, her song is a plea: “Give me a job and you instantly get me involved / If you give me a job / Then the rest of the crap will get solved.”

In the stripped-down Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra/Rainbow Stage production of A Chorus Line this weekend, Winnipeg actress Catherine Wreford plays the role of Cassie, and for her, it fits like a leotard.

“The story of Cassie is that she is from New York, she goes to L.A., she doesn’t really work,” Wreford says.

“She does some silly stuff. She goes to some auditions and does some parts in movies and she comes back to New York and tries to get back into a chorus line.”

Wreford has been there. She worked on Broadway and was the star of a touring production of 42nd Street before she quit.

“My body was just so burnt out, that I just needed a break,” she says. “So I ended up in Los Angeles and was sort-of working but not really working, and I ended up living there for seven years.

“The only reason I moved home was that I was diagnosed with brain cancer,” she says. Wreford was diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma—a grade-three brain tumour — in 2013 and was given about six years to live.

“During a year of treatment, I got to think about what do I really want to do?” she recalls. “And what I really wanted to do with the time I had left was what I love most, which is dancing. So when I found out they were doing A Chorus Line, I thought that was the perfect show for me because Cassie is who I am.”

Wreford says she doesn’t see Cassie as a tragic character. 

“(Cassie is asked) ‘How could you do that?’ But that’s what I want. I love dancing and it doesn’t matter where I’m dancing or who’s watching,” she says. “It matters that I can express myself through my dancing.

“And I feel like some people don’t get that. ‘Oh, you’re just in the chorus.’ But the chorus is just as important as a main role. It doesn’t matter. I was in the ensemble for Mamma Mia! last year with Rainbow Stage and I enjoyed it just as much.”

The preparation is extra work because of her condition, she says. 

“I’ve been learning my lines over and over and over again,” she says. “I have to do it so many times so that it becomes my long-term memory because I really don’t have much of a short-term memory at all. I have to figure out a different way to do stuff than I did before.”

“I’m doing well,” she adds. “I had an MRI on Valentine’s Day and everything was stable. So that was good news.

“I’m feeling pretty good,” she says. “I just need to make sure I’m resting enough. I’m feeling like we’re really going to have a great show and it’s important to me that I do my part.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing