Qasim Khan: to be and be and be

1 May 2024 - Rehearsal photos by Elana Emer ; Promotional photos by Kristina Ruddick

"I just love acting." says Qasim Khan who is having a very busy year, having just closed The Inheritance, being about to open in Hedda Gabler, and with the title role in Hamlet filling his summer. Three major, and lengthy, roles. "It feels like every play ever is a marathon," says Khan. "The Inheritance has been the most intense marathon because there’s two plays there. But truly, because I’ve spent most of my career working in repertory theatre at places like Stratford, Shaw, Soulpepper, Charlottetown, and even at High Park the last time I did Hamlet, I’m used to working in multiple worlds at the same time. Switching gears is built into my practice. The thing I’m navigating all the time is fatigue. The last week of the run of The Inheritance was also the first week of rehearsal for Hedda Gabler. So, I was awake at 5:30am to work out, I’d be at Coal Mine Theatre for 10am, finish at 5pm, drive to the Bluma Appel Theatre as quickly as I could to take a nap on my yoga mat, then shower and coffee to wake up, and do three to four hours of The Inheritance. And then be home in bed by 1:30am. No time to come down from the show, and certainly no time for a life, e-mail, phone calls, none of that. And once we closed The Inheritance, there was no down time to recover from that marathon. That’s okay, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Or once we close Hamlet on September first. I'm not complaining about any of this, I’m very lucky that I have the year that is happening."

The raison d'etre for this interview is to promote Hedda Gabler so Khan obliges. "This will  be a different Hedda Gabler because of the incredible company coming together to work on the piece. Liisa Repo-Martell’s adaptation of Ibsen’s text is endlessly fascinating. It makes the writing feel fresh, direct, and sits well inside our contemporary mouths. She’s in the room with us, so we have the luxury to negotiate lines as we work which is rare and lovely. We are about to start tech, so getting to layer in Emily Haines’ music will add an edge that keeps our production vital and throbbing. The design of the piece is also a huge part of what sets our production apart; I think audiences will be seeing something that honors Ibsen’s intentions along with a production that speaks to us today. The Coal Mine Theatre itself is a huge part of where the electricity comes from. This is a very intimate space, and the play takes place in one living room. When you’re watching, you’re about a foot away from our bodies and faces. You feel like you’re sitting in our living room, like a voyeur, watching us navigate our lives, our dreams, our relationships."

And Khan is working with pros with Ibsen experience. "Moya O’Connell [The Sound Inside], our director, is bringing so much connection to this text, she played the part herself at the Shaw Festival under the direction of Martha Henry. And she studied the play while doing her masters, her thesis was on Hedda Gabler too. She knows this text so well  the story is in very good hands. She’s also open and curious about our takes on the scenes. We are getting the best of everything: the things that work well for the play, and new perspectives that will unlock the piece in a fresh way. It’s all very exciting." Also exciting is the rest of the cast. "What an incredible experience it is to get to play with Fiona Reid [The Audience, London Road]. Her Aunt Julie is so touching and so playful that it’s hard to keep a straight face. Similarly, what a pleasure it is to work with Nancy Beatty, playing Berta. I’m getting to watch yet another icon do what she does, and it’s such a gift. Leah Doz [A Streetcar Named Desire] and I go back years and years, but this is our first time working together. Leah is a theatre beast and watching her dig her way through is very compelling, her Thea Elvsted is thrilling. But Diana Bentley [Yerma, Knives in Hens, Category E] is the reason we are all gathering to do this show. Watching her navigate Hedda’s roller coaster, fine tuning her work inside of it, bringing beauty and life and vitality to the part, is currently the highlight of this process. I felt this way from the beginning, but it’s a privilege getting to work with such a strong group of women, especially on this show."

But Khan has a major role of his own, that of Tesman, Hedda's ill-fated husband. "My mission right now is to humanize this guy as much as I can," says Khan. "Tesman can often feel like a clown, or a bit of a joke. He’s a nice guy, he dotes on his wife, and traditionally functions as a bit of laugh relief for the audience. While all of that is true, he’s also a full human being, with his own dreams, he own drive, and his own way of taking action. I’m finding where the truth of Tesman lives for me, while also having fun playing the bits that are meant to bring some light to the darkness. I don’t want him to be ridiculed, I’d like him to be a strong, viable partner for Hedda. What I love about working on classics is that, because there’s so much history behind these plays, it’s kind of impossible to reinvent the wheel on any of it. I try to manage my expectations about trying to achieve anything. As an actor, I’m trying to bring as much of myself to the part as I can, partly to humanize him and make him a full character, but also because inevitably, this will be unique. Tesman hasn’t lived in my body, or with my voice and soul before, so, this will be something that an audience hasn’t seen."

Hedda Gabler is a modern classic, Hamlet is a Shakespearean classic, and The Inheritance is destined to be a classic, does Khan have any preferences? "My preference is to work on anything that allows me to find bits and pieces of myself inside of it," says Khan. "Where I can connect the writing, the direction and staging, and my work emotionally. So, to me, this is less about time-period or era and more about character and story and my personal connection to those things. How a piece will be directed and what the collaboration will be – artists involved, designers, etcetera, that all plays a bigger factor in deciding whether I’m the right guy for a piece or not. More so than classical versus. modern. I will say that part of the draw to come back to Toronto to do The Inheritance was this need I had to feel like my full self in a role for a change. Especially including my queerness. Having worked with Brendan Healy [Other People, How to Fail as a Popstar, Acha Bacha, The 20th of November, Pig, Arigato, Tokyo, The Silicone Diaries] previously on Acha Bacha at Theatre Passe-Muraille and Buddies in Bad Times, I knew that the process would be one that I loved. And I was right . Getting to speak sentences with strategic and artful 'likes' and 'umm's makes it feel like the lines are my own thoughts, because that’s, like, umm, how I speak. So even though it was contemporary or modern or however you want to describe it, it was still, just like Hedda Gabler and just like Hamlet, an exercise in rigour, clarity, and listening. All that to say, it was nice and freeing to not have to wear armour, or a wig, or carry a sword, or speak in a dialect, or any of the stuff that comes along with ‘classics.’ It was nice to feel as close to myself as I could possibly feel in a play and I’m bringing that freedom back to the work we’re doing on Hedda Gabler and what I hope to bring to Hamlet in a couple of months."

Which brings us back to concerns that Khan will be overwhelmed having multiple roles ricocheting through his brain. "Music is a very big part of my life," says Khan, "And each show has its own playlist that I listen to when getting ready. Or when going between rehearsals to shows. It’s a way for me to get into the vibe or the world of each play. A shortcut if I’m juggling multiple characters at once. Music connects me to my gut, and the right music can get my guts in the right spot to do whatever the show is that night. I’m not normally the kind of actor that can sit on my couch with a script to drill lines into my brain, I try to attach lines and thoughts to staging and relationship to my scene partners. Somehow that alleviates the reality that I have three or four full scripts in my head. I just know that when I talk to Antoine Yared [Fall On Your Knees, Lear] playing Toby in The Inheritance, my body moves in a particular way and I have a particular pattern of thoughts. When I talk to Diana's Hedda, my body moves differently, I have other kinds of thoughts, and say different things."

Khan has some time to inhabit Tesman before he assumes the mantle of the moody Dane. "We have yet to start rehearsals on Hamlet," he says, "but we have done a few readings of the script. The shows at High Park all must be abridged, so our director, Jessica Carmichael, has put together a great edit of Shakespeare’s text that will be the basis of our work. Our version is going to pull out the threads of grief, loss, and also a bigger connection to the earth and nature, which is fitting because of the park itself. Jessica has expanded on some of Shakespeare’s ideas in the latest draft of the script, and it all flows really well. But our version will reveal itself once we get into the hall in June and get on our feet." Khan has appeared in Hamlet in High Park before, but in the role of Horatio. How does it feel to return as the lead? "It feels good! That kind of shift happened over the course of the last seven years, particularly in my time at Stratford. I’ve learned a ton watching people lead shows and I know that the temperature in a rehearsal hall or backstage often is set by the actors who have lots of words to say. It’s nice to strive to create an environment where everyone feels respected, supported, and valued. It’s nice and fun and satisfying to drive action on stage rather than watch it happen. It’s nice as an actor to have a bit more agency over the work, and to approach productions as a collaborator, where my voice and perspective matters, versus feeling like I must execute what a director imagines a ‘sidekick’ to be doing."

As with Tesman, Khan plans to carve out his own Hamlet. "I think the good thing is that that show was so long ago that I barely remember what we did," says Khan. "What I remember was seeing Frank Cox-O'Connell [The Shape of Home, Hand to God, Rose, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet]  navigate a challenging edit to the script for that particular production and doing that so strongly and skillfully. Frank navigating the sharp turns that Hamlet makes during the play stands out to me, and I’m sure I’ll be reflecting on those as I work on my interpretation. But honestly, for my own sake, I’m trying to find my own way through the piece versus thinking too hard about what people have done in the past. Frank was terrific! My guy will be different because Frank and I are very different actors. Hamlet is so ubiquitous, there’s no shortage of Hamlets to take in and such a wide variety of interpretations. I’m steering clear of thinking too hard about any singular interpretation, because our version will be its own thing. I have a lot of personal connection to death, grief, loss of a father, and some of the other things that destabilize Hamlet as a character, and I’m excited to thread those together with Jessica Carmichael to create our version. I’ll discover my Hamlet as we work on it, with our unique text, and our powerful ensemble."

It is indeed a "powerful ensemble" and Khan is as eager and excited to work with them as I am to be in the audience. "It’s kind of a dream cast," says Khan. "This company brings together so many different circles of artists I love and have spent time with. I’m excited to see how we jam on Hamlet together as an ensemble. Diego Matamoros [A Public Reading of a Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, Post-Democracy, Little Menace, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Royale] was my mentor during my time at Soulpepper, and that’s also where I met Raquel Duffy [Rose, La Bete, Animal Farm, The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?]  and Dan Mousseau [Wildwoman, Prodigal]. Beck Lloyd, Christo Graham, and Amelia Sargisson [Red Velvet, King Lear] are three of my favorite artists from my time at the Stratford Festival. Breton Lalama [The Inheritance, Queen Goneril, King Lear] and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff [The Inheritance,Richard II, Fifteen Dogs, Every Little Nookie, Trout Stanley, Towards Youth, Erased: Billy & Bayard, Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom, Black Boys] were both just in The Inheritance, and Stephen and I are good friends from real life. And I’m also excited to work with Prince Amponsah [Contempt], Sam Kalilieh, and James Dallas Smith, all for the first time. I think this is a very thrilling cast and that we’ll be bringing something powerful to High Park this summer."

There is another set of contrasts in the boards Khan has been, and will be, treading. The luxurious Bluma Appel, the intimacy of The Coal Mine, and then a Shakespearean tragedy in the open air. "I think of the amphitheatre at High Park as I do any theatre space," says Khan. "It’s a stage that’s vast and powerful enough to hold everything: light and dark, heavy and light, funny and tragic. Like any great play, Hamlet also holds all of those. Yes there’s drama, tragedy, death, torment, ghosts, etcetera, but there’s also joy, humor, laughter, and music. I think sometimes there’s a tendency to undercut a play happening outdoors because we’re afraid of not holding an audience’s attention, and I don’t think that has to be the case. I believe an audience will lean into actors who are speaking to each other and building relationships. And you know what pairs well with seeing the human spirit reflected on stage? A bottle of wine and a picnic. The Bluma was a space I never thought I’d intersect with, but I think it’s now one of my favourite stages in Toronto. I’ve been lucky and have gotten to work on some of the most epic stages in this country. What’s left? The Royal Alex is my favorite theatre in the world.. Let’s manifest that all together.