There’s nothing like a night out with friends to lift one’s spirits.
For 25 years, as artistic director of New Stages Peterborough, Randy Read facilitated an incredible night out for thousands of theatre lovers. On Friday, November 17th at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough, the tables will be turned as many of his cherished stage friends come together to pay homage to his loving guidance of the theatre company that he founded in 1997.
Billed as ‘an outrageous and joyous cabaret tribute,’ Let’s Get Randy will feature top performers, both local and from afar, including multi Canadian Screen Award nominated actress Sharron Matthews (Frank Drake Mysteries), who will host what promises to be an over-the-top affair.
Among those performing will be Peterborough’s own Kate Suhr and Stratford Festival mainstay Steve Ross, Read’s partner of 31 years. There are several others in the mix but who they are is being kept a surprise for the man they’re gathering to salute.
“They asked me if I want to know and I said ‘No, I would rather be surprised,'” says Read, who will sing the show’s second last song. “The (New Stages Peterborough) board and (artistic director) Mark (Wallace) decided to do this and asked me if it was OK. Who wouldn’t feel good about this? I’m very touched and honoured.”
“I sort of wish a few people would say some rotten things about me because God knows I’m not perfect. Will the audience learn something about me they don’t know? Well, I think they know I’m gay but, if not, maybe I’ll break the news to them that night.”
Since Read revealed he was stepping down as the company’s artistic director last year, he hasn’t had a whole lot of reason to smile.
In November, while riding his bicycle, he was struck by a truck and suffered a devastating pelvic fracture. After it was pieced backed together at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital, Read was bedridden for three months. He’ll return to Sunnybrook on November 29 for hip replacement surgery that was delayed due the seriousness of his pelvic injuries.
“I can’t walk without a cane,” he says. “Unless the part calls for a guy with a cane, I can’t audition for anything. For years, I started every single day singing and dancing for an hour, an hour and a half. I hate that I can’t do that now.”
If that’s not enough to bring down his normally upbeat persona, Read has “lost three very close friends in the last three months.”
Clearly, a great night out with friends will prove to be the perfect medicine. In the meantime, Read finds comfort in reflecting on his journey to this point.
Raised in Mount Pleasant east of Peterborough, Read says he knew by age 12 that a life working in theatre was his destiny.
“My siblings have said ‘You’re so damn lucky. You always knew what you wanted to do,'” he recalls. “I had read a biography of Mozart and Beethoven. I would break into the Mount Pleasant Woman’s Institute Hall through a basement window and stand on the stage and give lectures about Mozart and Beethoven to an empty room. We rehearsed our school Christmas concert at the same hall. That was so thrilling for me.”
Later, as an English literature student at Trent University, Read immersed himself wholly in theatre circles, acting in a number of university productions and Peterborough Theatre Guild stagings.
“Dennis Sweeting, who ran the Academy Theatre in Lindsay, saw me in a play at Trent and hired me for a summer season there.”
Upon graduating in 1978, Read sought bigger stages in Toronto.
“The competition was so stiff,” he remembers. “You would go to an audition and you would look around and you would feel like there were 10 carbon copies of you in the room.”
With the help of an agent, Read subsequently went where the roles were — Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Edmonton were among the stops. Come 1992, after accepting an offer from Canadian Stage Company artistic director Bob Baker to be his assistant and casting director, Read was fully in his element.
“On the first day of rehearsal for a play, everybody would sit around a table for a reading, including the caretaker,” recalls Read.
Wanting “to bring that same sense of camaraderie to a theatre company in my hometown,” he returned to his roots, another factor in that decision being a desire to be closer to his mom who was struggling with COPD and rheumatoid arthritis.
Noting “Peterborough was half redneck and half arts,” Read banked on the latter half supporting a new theatre company. In 1997, he debuted Peterborough New Stages as a summer theatre company, staging one production that first season.
“We were doing summer theatre for a couple of years and then the Peterborough Theatre Guild says ‘Oh, we should do summer theatre too,'” Read recalls. “They were charging $12 a ticket. With our actors being paid union rates, we couldn’t that.”
“But it was actually a good thing. We moved toward producing throughout the year and became sort of a small regional theatre. Doing it throughout the year allowed us go a bit deeper in what plays we chose to do.”
The ensuing years, says Read, saw “the odd clunker” staged but on reflection, he’s “very proud of the work we did. I was very careful when choosing the plays we would stage. I got better at it, I think.”
“One of the very worst scripts we took on was Menopositive, a musical about women going through menopause. Well, people came out in droves. It’s not always the best work that brings people out. Look at Stratford. Shakespeare is Shakespeare but they have to do musicals to survive because people want them. Musicals have sort of kept them going in a way.”
“I never took a salary over the first 20 years. Everybody got paid but me. I loved it, so it didn’t bother me. I was able to survive.”
Read asked Wallace to join New Stages’ board of directors, which he did. A Dora Mavor Moore Award recipient, Wallace moved to Peterborough more than 15 years ago and has since acted in New Stages productions and served as associate artistic director before being named artistic director last year.
“Mark is a very different person than me,” notes Read of his successor. “It was time to for me step aside. I’m 70 years old. I’m fairly with it, but I’m not young. Mark has fresher ideas. He has two kids, a different life than mine, and thus he has a different perspective.”
Now, as his special night draws near, Read hopes it’s as much a celebration of New Stages as it is a tribute to the huge role he has played in its success and his promotion of the arts.
“God knows I didn’t do anything on my own,” he says. “I loved it for 25 years but I was really ready to hand the reins over to Mark. I had done most of the plays on my bucket list, if not all of them. I say it facetiously but I am old. It needs new and younger blood. I’m glad it has survived and I was able to hand it over to somebody.”
Read clarifies Let’s Get Randy is a celebration, not an obituary.
“My life isn’t over — I have a lot of stuff I want to do,” he says. “During COVID, Mary Breen asked me if I wanted to take her memory writing class by Zoom. I started writing short stories about growing up in Mount Pleasant, some very funny and some very tragic. I want to continue on that path.”
“I always wanted to try writing short stories about growing up there. It has just sort of poured out of me. Maybe I’ll put it all together and create a one-man show out of it. Who knows how long we have? It’s important to keep learning and growing right up until they put you under.”
Away from the stage, his relationship with Ross remains solid, albeit Ross’ work in Stratford means considerable time apart.
“We’re apart so much, a lot of our friends say ‘That’s why you’re so happy together’,” laughs Read.
Ahead, once he’s fully recovered from his injuries, Read wants to do something he planned to do late last year — host an open-to-all dance at Market Hall to mark his December birthday.
“I love to dance. I’m hoping to do that for my 72nd birthday (in 2024). It will be free admission, but you’re free to donate to New Stages on your way out.”
Tickets for Let’s Get Randy cost $40 — $20 for students, arts workers and the under waged — and are available online at tickets.markethall.org.
News Stages’ 2023-24 season is its biggest one yet, with eight productions from October 2023 to June 2024. For more information about the 2023-24 season, visit www.newstages.ca.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be media sponsor of New Stages Theatre Company’s 2023-24 season.
