Sea Wall star is part actor, part babysitter

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This article was published 21/07/2015 (3740 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RODRIGO Beilfuss had such a bizarre opening night to his run of Sea Wall last Thursday that he had to share the story with the drama’s English playwright, Simon Stephens.

As the Winnipeg actor tells it, a clueless dad took his four daughters — two who seemed to be preschoolers and the other pair who were 10 years old — to the 30-minute monologue (described in the program as being about young love, fatherhood and family) at the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre. They sat on opposite sides in the front of the theatre, but dad didn’t sit with them or bother to monitor them while Beilfuss was speaking a few feet away.

“Thank God, Mel Marginet (Theatre by the River artistic director) and Kendra Jones (my co-director) sat behind the girls and essentially babysat them, as the two younger ones kept sliding up and down their seats or licking the chairs or playing with the Velcro in their sandals,” says Beilfuss, who performed the title role of Hamlet a few months ago.

The report got a chuckle out of Stevens.

“That is one beautiful story,” Stevens wrote Beilfuss via email. “What was he thinking?! Poor bored kids and poor you, man. Glad the rest of the show sang. Enjoy yourself in there, my friend. Wish I could see it.”

The presence of the girls would have been distressing to patrons of Sea Wall, as the story takes a shocking turn involving a girl in their age range.

“It was definitely not kids theatre, on so many levels,” Beilfuss says.

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