Meet Shakespeare in Action’s Artistic Director: Brampton’s own Cameron Grant

Shakespeare has always been intimidating to me. Like most people I first encountered his plays in my high school English class. The magic of Midsummer Night’s Dream…why did they think running away into a magic forest would solve their problems? The rage of King Lear…why did he have to give up his kingdom? Othello’s deterioration into madness…why didn’t he ever question Iago? Hamlet’s pursuit to avenge his father’s death…why doesn’t he just do it already? I loved the stories, but the text at times felt impossible to understand, and even more difficult to speak. Reading his plays sometimes felt like I was reading another language. It wasn’t until I saw a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Stratford Festival that I understood Shakespeare’s plays are not meant to be read, they are meant to be seen!

When I chose to train as an actor I knew I had to start getting comfortable with Shakespeare. I made more of an effort to read his plays and those of his contemporaries (yes there were other writers who were just as popular as Shakespeare writing at the time). As an actor I have used his monologues for audition pieces and performed in several professional productions of his plays. I have come to realize that once you understand the rules of iambic pentameter and the conventional play structure from the time he is writing in, Shakespeare becomes quite simple. Unlike most modern plays, the text provides the actor everything they need to understand the character and the story.

I am not saying his work isn't challenging. As an actor, engaging with his text requires a level of rigor. My job as an actor is to understand every single word, in order to make the story as clear as possible for the audience. And the audience has a job too. Shakespeare’s plays ask us to listen in a different way. There are words, jokes, references to stories, people, and places that are not readily familiar to a modern audience, and that is okay! In any Shakespeare play the audience is asked to meet the players halfway by activating their imaginations. The themes and conflicts central to his plays still resonate with audiences today.

How does a young man find justice for his father’s wrongful death? What kind of toll does the quest for revenge take on a young mind? What happens to humanity when we put our own interest above morality? I believe these questions keep asking us to find new relevance in Shakespeare’s best-known tragedy of Hamlet.

Cameron Grant is an actor, playwright, theatre creator, artist educator, and the Artistic Director of Shakespeare in Action. As an actor, Cameron has performed in theatres across the country including the Grand Theatre (London), Persephone Theatre, Thousand Islands Playhouse, Soulpepper, Stratford Festival, four seasons at the Shaw Festival, Talk Is Free Theatre, Theatre Animal, Theatre Erindale, Secret Shakespeare Series, Canadian Rep Theatre, and Clay and Paper Theatre. He has assistant directed productions at Bard on The Beach, Factory Theatre and Theatre Erindale. His first play, Meet Chloe, a play that explores the challenges Black students face in the education system and the lack of Black curriculum content in the study of Canadian History, received its premiere at Carousel Players. Cameron also works as an artist educator and has developed and facilitated workshops for The City of Brampton Performing Arts, Theatre Direct, The Shaw Festival, The Rose Theatre, Suitcase In Point Theatre, in high schools across Ontario and at Toronto Metropolitan University. He was the co-facilitator for the first cohort of the Heartbeats in Performing Arts program at the City of Brampton Performing Arts in 2021 and supported the program as a mentor in 2022. Cameron completed an internship in Artistic Leadership with the City of Brampton Performing Arts during the 2021/2022 season funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.