Drama alumnus returns to Greystone Theatre stage for Henry V

By Shannon Boklaschuk

Award-winning Saskatoon actor Skye Brandon is heading back to the stage that helped launch his professional theatre career.

The University of Saskatchewan alumnus earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2000. Throughout his undergraduate studies in the late 1990s, he appeared in Greystone Theatre shows produced by the College of Arts and Science’s Department of Drama.

Brandon returned to the U of S campus—and to student life—in the fall of 2016. That’s when he began pursuing an interdisciplinary master’s degree, studying through the departments of drama, history and English. Soon he will star in and direct Greystone Theatre’s upcoming production of William Shakespeare’s Henry V as part of his master’s thesis work.

“The final chapter will be a reflection on the production,” said Brandon, who is taking on the title role in the play.

Brandon’s master’s thesis is focused on historical research informing artistic decisions. He has chosen to examine Shakespeare, specifically Henry V.

“That came out of a general frustration that, from time to time, when working on Shakespeare plays, quite often we try to shoehorn the plays into a different setting. Which is not to say they can’t work in other settings, but then sometimes we don’t take the time to figure out what was going on when the play was written, what was going on historically in these events that could help us inform the decisions we make,” he said.

Brandon said working on this thesis has been “a great deal of fun and has been as been as helpful as I hoped it would be.”

“So it’s not about necessarily about trying to make the play historically accurate, or producing it in the way that Shakespeare would have done it the first time. But what details can we parse out to help us flesh out the characters and the storytelling?”

Brandon is certainly no stranger to Shakespeare’s plays. His stage career has taken him to theatres throughout Canada, and he was the first Saskatchewan artist to be accepted into the Birmingham Conservatory of Classical Theatre at the Stratford Festival, where he spent multiple seasons as a member of the acting company. Since returning to Saskatchewan, Brandon has directed for both the YXE Shakespeare Lab (Cymbeline, Richard II and both parts of Henry IV) and Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan (Richard III).

In addition to the U of S, Brandon’s theatre studies have taken him to the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and to Shakespeare’s Globe in London, England, where he was a member of the 2015 International Actors’ Fellowship. More recently, he received a Saskatoon and Area Theatre Award (SATAward) for Outstanding Leading Performance for his portrayal of Hamlet in Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan’s 2018 summer production.

Brandon, who has been teaching a third-year drama class on Shakespeare at the U of S, said eight of his 10 students will appear in the upcoming production of Henry V. As far as he can tell, that particular Shakespearean play has never been produced in Saskatchewan—something he finds appealing.

“I like doing the plays that don’t get done often—in part to put them on stage here, but also because I just feel like they are good plays and we can go beyond the ‘big 12’ that we tend to see or talk about in class more often than not,” he said.

As its name would suggest, Henry V is set following the death of Henry IV. With England in a state of unrest, the newly crowned Henry V must leave his rebellious youth behind and strive to gain the respect of his nobility and people. Laying claim to parts of France and following an insult from the French Dauphin, Henry gathers his troops and prepares for a war that he hopes will unite his country. Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599) is known for masterfully presenting how war affects not only a nation but also the individuals involved.

Because Brandon directed and acted in the Henry IV plays through the YXE Shakespeare Lab last winter, directing and starring in Henry V is a natural progression for him. He said a number of second-year students are involved with Henry V, so the show will mark their first time performing on the Greystone Theatre stage.

“There’s 22 of us (in the cast),” he said. “I made a point of trying to involve a good number of students because you don’t get to do that in the professional ranks very often—unless you’ve got a big budget at a big theatre—and it gets more people involved.”

While Brandon is on familiar territory at Greystone Theatre, he said some things have changed at the John Mitchell Building since his undergraduate days. He calls these changes “pleasant surprises.”

“I’ve had a couple of moments where I’ve had to remind myself like, ‘Oh right, they’ve got a door in the back corner now that didn’t use to exist there,’ ” he said. “Before you had to do this long loop around and then try to beat the audience back down to the dressing room at intermission. It’s like, no, there’s a door in that corner now, and they actually have access to the side that used to belong to soil sciences. So there’s this whole under passage that we never had access to (in the 1990s).”

Henry V is set to run from Nov. 21 to Dec. 1. Tickets range from $17 to $22 (and from $13 to $19 for the preview night on Nov. 21). Two-for-one student prices will be offered on Nov. 26. A valid student card will be required for purchase.

The shows start at 8 p.m. (there will be no show on Nov. 25). For more information, or to buy tickets, call 306-966-5188.

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