The 'gut punch' of Sarah Gadon's live theatre debut was a wake-up call in her own life
The veteran screen actress says seeing the play Yerma for the first time felt like being struck by lightning
When Sarah Gadon first saw Yerma, the play hit her "at a gut level."
The veteran Canadian actress is currently playing the titular character in a modernization of the 1934 play by Federico García Lorca at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto. Yerma tells the story of a woman in her 30s, whose drive to have a child and resulting resentment toward her husband drives her to madness.
In an interview on Q with Tom Power, Gadon said that her first exposure to Yerma was when she saw former pop singer and Doctor Who star Billie Piper in it in New York in 2018 — a performance that redefined Piper's career, and made Gadon say "this person's a genius."
Gadon — who has appeared in TV shows ranging from Alias Grace and True Detective to Letterkenny — said that the performance also acted as a wake-up call and motivated her to re-examine her own life. She was in her 30s, ready to have a child, but not in a position to have one in other ways, and it was starting to eat at her.
"I was actually thinking, 'I'm in my early 30s. I'm inside of an unhealthy relationship and something like this is happening to me,'" she said. "And it was like this struck-by-lightning moment that I often think great art, great theatre has the ability to do."
She added that it wasn't just her relationship that was messing with her head. She had multiple roles in a row that required her to wear a pregnancy suit. At the same time, before starting every job, she received a medical exam to make sure she wasn't actually pregnant, for insurance purposes.
"I have an unconventional job," she says. "I'm an artist, and I'm reckoning in my 30s with this idea of having a successful career, having a very demanding career, but also kind of simultaneously feeling punished for having that career because I don't have a mat leave. There's no financial support for me."
As a veteran of TV and film, Gadon says that live theatre is a very different experience for her, because the audience feedback is so immediate.
"I've never performed in front of a live audience, so the immediacy of my work is not something that I'm accustomed to," she says. "I finished the play, and the lights came up [after] the first preview, and there were so many women my age in the audience, and I just saw their faces and they all looked like they'd been punched in the guts. It was just fascinating because there it is. There's the play. The play is on your face."
Gadon says that she was able to tackle the role now because her life at home is much more supportive, thanks in part to her husband, who she describes as "extremely emotionally intelligent and special and just a really beautiful person." But she was also helped by the trust that she has in the play's director, Diana Bentley.
"When she came to me and said, 'Do you want to do this play with me?' I was like, 'Absolutely,'" she says. "Because she's also a super powerful and grounded leader. I knew she was not going to be there to exploit me in any kind of way."
"What I've learned as an actor is, when you're playing roles that are entrenched in trauma, you have to do them with a director who is an adult and who can carry the space and the intention of the project with serious integrity. They're not there to play any mind games with you ... They're there to really be your partner and be your safety net."
Having that kind of support, both emotionally and creatively, allowed Gadon to explore Yerma. The play is a product of its time, and Gadon acknowledges that "there's so much misogyny in the play ... so much discussion around misogyny toward women and fertility." That said, in her eyes, the character of Yerma is actually a heroine of sorts.
"She's taking no prisoners," says Gadon. "She is going for her objective in, like, the strongest way possible. I think she's relentlessly pursuing truth in all of her relationships, in her life. And she's not accepting complacency. She's not accepting a lie. She's not accepting the withholding of love that she's experiencing from her mother or her sister or her partner."
Yerma runs at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto until March 5.
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