Carleton University English professor Adam Barrows says he has carried a lesson from every theatre role he’s taken on throughout his life.
His most recent one, General Löwenheim in 9th Hour Theatre Company’s production of Babette’s Feast, is no exception.
The play follows two Lutheran sisters, and how their community in northern Norway embraces French refugee Babette. What follows is a story of transformation through art, grace and acceptance, culminating in a feast prepared by Babette.
The show will run at The Gladstone Theatre from Nov. 6 to 15.
The Charlatan sat down with Barrows to learn more about his history with theatre and the meaning behind Babette’s Feast.
The Charlatan (TC): What is your background with acting and theatre?
AB: When I was in Grade 7, they were calling for people to be in a play. I don’t know what possessed me to raise my hand, but I got a non-speaking background part. I had a scene where I was supposed to get down off the ladder and run off, but I thought it would be so much funnier if I jumped and rolled – so I did a bit of clowning, and the audience cheered.
I told my parents and they immediately put me in acting classes. It opened up a whole world. I trained intensively in my teens, living and breathing theatre. I decided one day I wouldn’t make a living out of acting, and there were periods where I regretted that.
Coming back to it in Ottawa as a hobby, I’ve gotten so much joy from it.
TC: What is your role in the show, and what have you taken away from that experience?
AB: It’s an ensemble piece, so we all play multiple characters and transform into the scenes the story requires. The major character I transform into at the end is General Löwenhielm, the ex-suitor of the eldest daughter. I play him 30 years later, after he left because he found their life of religious purity and piety too intense for him. He went and lived a worldly, cosmopolitan life as a wealthy general.
At the end of the play, I come back and have a wonderful scene where I confront my younger self in a mirror and look at what might have been, wondering if I made the right choice. When I sit down at the dinner, I give a speech about grace and beauty and how they don’t have to be separate.
I’m sort of a strict method actor. The goal is to inhabit this person. Every character I play changes me, because I’ve walked around in that person’s skin. General Löwenhielm comes to a sense of real peace, closure and acceptance for things he thinks he did wrong. I find that interesting because everybody has a life to look back on and think about what could have gone better. Playing this character has been cathartic for me.
TC: Why do you think it was important for 9th Hour Theatre Company to put on this piece?
AB: I know the artistic directors were really touched by the idea that faith can be an art. As well, you can’t go out and choose grace, it’s a gift you have to receive. So this dinner Babette gives is kind of a gift of grace. All they have to do is be open to accept it when it comes.
It’s also a play about immigration, coming at a time when the politics of immigration are extraordinarily fraught. There’s a question about whether we really need immigrants, and whether we should close the doors and protect our “own people” or not.
This is a play about how foolhardy that is: to close yourself off to the grace of strangeness and foreignness, and the kind of gifts, energy and love it can bring to your community.
TC: What do you hope the audience will take away from the show?
AB: The speech I give at the end shows we can open ourselves up to grace and accept it. We’re all the recipients of all kinds of gifts in this world, but sometimes we don’t see it that way.
So much of my life feels like a gift these days. I hope the audience walks away thinking they’ve been given a gift.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Featured image by Simon McKeown/the Charlatan
