Episode 114: The Working Actor: Back to School

Actor Steve Ross has spent 11 years at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and has performed for many years across Canada. He talks about the first step in his acting career - going to the National Theatre School. What stays with him about that time? Why did he choose that school? Why did he almost leave? Did it prepare him for a career as a working actor? Listen in and find out.

Show Notes

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere.

I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk.

Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Episode 114. You can find all the links for this episode at theatrefolk.com/episode114.

Today, we continue our Working Actor series on the podcast. What is it like to be a working actor? How did a choice of school help? What is it like to tour? What’s something you should definitely not do?

The focus for this week is “back to school.” How does theatre school help prepare a working actor?

Today, I talk to actor Steve Ross who is just finishing up his eleventh year of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and he started his journey at Canada’s National Theatre School and I just need to preface that, when I was recording this podcast, I was suffering from a mild case of consumption – better known as a cold – I’m sniffling and coughing, all that fun stuff. I apologize greatly.

Lindsay: Hello everyone! I’m here with Steve Ross. Hello Steve!

Steve: Hello! How are you?

Lindsay: I’m wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Steve: Pleasure.

Lindsay: All right. So, first of all, where in the world are you right now?

Steve: I am in Stratford. I am in my eleventh season at the Stratford Festival.

Lindsay: Is that lovely to have a long-term job? Do you look forward to it every year?

Steve: It’s fantastic.

Lindsay: Yeah?

Steve: Not only is it nice to have an eight-month gig in general but it’s also just a really fantastic place to work. I have loved it since I got here. I didn’t intend to ever get here.

Lindsay: No?

Steve: No, I didn’t ever think I would, actually. It was sort of assumed when I went to the National Theatre School. It’s kind of a pipeline and people just immediately head to Stratford, but I didn’t because I wanted to really look at musicals. When I graduated, it was the time of the big, big musicals and multiple musicals running in Toronto and I wanted to focus on that.

So, I moved to Toronto right away instead of pursuing Stratford and I was there for seven years before they called me to come in to audition and I finally did get my head around, “Yeah, we could do both; we can do musicals and classical stuff here,” and I have since fallen deeply in love with the place.

Lindsay: Isn’t that interesting? I think sometimes actors get into their head that they can only be one kind of actor, do one kind of thing.

Steve: Yeah.

Lindsay: Is that something that you went through when you were a younger actor?

Steve: Well, I think I imposed it on myself, weirdly. There I was at a really wonderful classical school that was giving you wonderful classical training and all I wanted was to do musicals and I guess I was too narrow-minded. That’s all I wanted to do and I actually almost quit NTS.

Lindsay: Wow.

Steve: Because I thought, “You know what? If I’m going to do this, I should focus more on musical theatre,” and, as I was on my way to quit, our singing teacher at NTS walked by me in the hall – and he was a great guy – and he said, “Oh, where are you going?” I said, “I think I’m going to quit and go to Sheraton for musical theatre,” and, completely innocently, he went, “Oh, that’s weird.