Anthony Palermo on The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?
"Did you hear the way they reacted to this?"

12 Aug 2024 - Photos by David Hou

"It's definitely shocking," says Anthony Palermo of Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?  "We've been in previews but it's such an interesting challenge because audiences have all reacted completely differently each time. Every night the audience will have a completely different reaction. Sometimes they're really on the comedy train and laughing the entire time. And sometimes they're dead silent and having a lot of disgusted reactions. Sometimes it'll go back and forth. Sometimes it's very loud. Sometimes it's very quiet. It's like the audience takes on their own persona. We call them the fifth member of this play. Dean Gabourie, our director, has had a lot of chats with us about what this play is about and what it's doing.  At the end of the day, the play is about love, loss, and the limits of tolerance. And playwright Edward Albie is taking you there to make a point about those ideals. It was later in his career and he was definitely experimenting more and I think cared less about what people thought of him. He wanted a reaction. He wanted people to throw chairs is what he said. That's quite fun to to be working on."

Palermo is familiar to audiences for The Gray and She, Men & the Giant F*cking Snake which are both pop musicals he created. A starring role at Stratford is a whole new stage in their career. "It's been really, really wonderful," they say. "It's been like such a learning curve at times, because it's such a different kind of world. But that's been a part of the fun, I think. And also part of the Stratford magic. In school I was really interested in Stratford. I felt like it was a big career goal of mine. I always was like, hopefully in the next ten years, but then for it to happen just right after I graduated was just such a blessing, such a lucky moment. Like all the stars aligning. It also felt like this was the show that it would happen for. I kind of had a feeling. I was like, oh, I need to be in this. I need to do this part. It's a great show. And it's kind of a juicy part.  I auditioned in February or March. And then I had an audition for The Goat in October with Dean in Toronto. And kind of met the team a bit. I then did a self-tape for Cymbeline. And then it just kind of happened. It all just kind of snowballed." 

And that was just the beginning. "At times it can really feel like truly like living in a fantasy world and the things that are so normalized, like I'm going for a wig fitting today and that's like my job. The work that I'm doing is is quite magical in a sense," says Palermo. "When I started I was like I feel like I'm actually doing my master's right now more so than anything. That's kind of my favourite part of being here, the amount that I'm learning is pretty unbelievable. The classes are wonderful. We have company classes for a bunch of different things, Shakespeare, voice,  but it's also acting on each of the different stages. Workshops for how Tom Patterson's thrust stage is different than the Festival. All that kind of stuff has been so wonderful and so necessary because acting here is just specific. You're doing such a specific job and you're performing only in this space which does not exist anywhere else. It has its specific quirks. It's definitely different and has only made me want to learn more. And practically, hands-on working with so many festival professionals, like pro, pro, veterans of this festival who have really been here and know exactly how to do it, learning from them firsthand and watching them perform has been truly the greatest teaching that I've received of all my schooling experiences."

Palermo adds that, "It's also such a huge honour working with Lucy Peacock in both Cymbeline and The Goat. It has been tremendous just in the sense of I could just watch her performances, watch her in rehearsal and take notes on the way she's able to navigate the space with her voice, with her body. I am constantly taking notes and and transferring that to myself and downloading that information into my brain. What's so wonderful about this place is that you have these pro actors who've been here for so long working alongside newcomers like myself. Those kind of  leaders and teachers and mentors within the acting company. This tradition of teaching that gets passed down. There are wonderful directors here as well, but the actor-to-actor kind of  mentorship is so special here. I'm at the point in the early stages of my career where I now really want to learn. It's funny because in school all I wanted was to not be in school, I just needed to graduate, I couldn't stand being in school anymore, I wanted to work. I  did every other outside opportunity that was possible for me because I was like, 'I want to do something else.' But now at this point, now that I've graduated, I actually want to learn a little bit more. That's been a really big spark in my next little journey, learning from the actors around me."

There is always research to be done and Palermo, and the company, dove into Albee's life and oeuvre. "He didn't have a wonderful childhood. He was brought up by parents who are very rich and I'm pretty sure, pretty big in the theater scene. But he was adopted and it was quite clear that they didn't want him. And he always felt a sense of his queerness being something that was a rupture to their relationship. Then at 17 or 18 he ran away. Dean has talked a lot about, Billy, my character, being sort of an Albee insert and this kind of being a love letter, but also kind of a hate letter to his parents and this family dynamic. I think that's what Albee does very well. He's so interested in family dynamics, nuanced family dynamics that are very messed up and tricky and complicated. I don't think he would ever admit it, but I think this is Albee kind of having this weird sort of nightmare fantasy about his family and that time in his life. This has given me a lot of like freedom in a sense, but also just inspired a lot of my performance. In my head, having a really authentic voice from the playwright of a real experience that he was going through, despite the sort of more odd things that my character has to say and do in this play. That I had to figure out how to like stick shift, drive a car through all those zigzags and make it authentic. I think that has given me a lot of like a guiding light."

Which brings us back to a (mostly) family friendly Shakespearean festival presenting a play where the father of a family falls in lust with a goat. "I guess I'm still just trying to wrap my head around a busload of people arriving and not not necessarily knowing what to expect," says Palermo. "We were all so prepared for walkouts. When we had rehearsals, Lucy and everyone would warn me that in the Studio Theatre, people actually can come down the stairs and onto the stage. 'So just prepared for that.' We haven't actually had  too many, but it's it's interesting to look out at the audience and to see people's faces just shocked, appalled, even looking away at points. But I think that's the unexpected nature of it. The people who are coming to see this show, and what this festival would usually program, it's definitely not Something Rotten!, let's say. I think that that makes us have a lot of fun is that we are doing that shocking thing. We are kind of telling the story that's a little bit more on edge and audiences have strong reactions."

But Palermo has also found that the festival has "a very sophisticated audience. Which is great. They're very smart and they know their history. There are a lot of deep, deep Shakespeare references in The Goat, older play references, Greek tragedy references, and we'll hear people laugh at them. And I'm like, do they really know what this specific reference is? And they do. They do know it. They do know the history. They do know the roles that Lucy played before. It's quite interesting to have that relationship with an audience that comes back every year. And these players move through different spaces and different characters, and the audience comes back to watch it.  That relationship is very specific and that lets you push the boundaries a little bit. To say, 'You may not have seen this before, but give it a chance.' I saw Richard II last year and that was a big turning point. I watched that production and I said, 'Oh, maybe I actually can work here.'  I think if I was able to be in something like that, such an interesting re-imagining and adaptation, so obviously queer, that would be such a dream and so fulfilling. That was definitely such an eye-opening production for me." And now Palermo is part of another eye-opening production. "I can't really imagine the show getting that boring," says Palermo, "because every single time we go offstage and we gather and we're like, 'Oh my god, did you hear the way they reacted to this?'"