Role reversal: A feminist’s take on Taming of the Shrew

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If there were such a thing as a feminist theatre pendulum, it would have swung wildly for Vancouver-based actor/director Meg Roe this season. Last fall, she starred in The Penelopiad – a stage adaptation of Margaret Atwood's re-telling of The Odyssey from Penelope's perspective. Now she is directing The Taming of the Shrew, with its happy ending of Kate's taming by new husband Petruchio, and her declaration that "Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign;" and that wives are "bound to serve, love, and obey."

Roe, a spirited optimist who is big on taking creative risks – does not appear overly concerned about the feminist conundrum posed by Shrew, although she has clearly given the issue a great deal of thought, carrying around a tiny notebook with pages full of quotations – maybe 50 of them, written out in longhand – many of which speak to the issue.

One note she returns to again and again asserts that Kate is not a woman who represents all womankind, but that she is a theatrical construct, to be looked at, not through.

"That really opened it up for me in a way," said Roe during a break from rehearsals. "Because you look at Shakespeare and all his other writing: he loves women, it's so clear that he loves women. And I think he loves Kate. And I think he's actually subverting what we most expect in the play. So much of what he writes about is hierarchies and statutes. Look at something like Henry V. So much of his writing is about how the common man supersedes the king. How do you subvert common status and hierarchies? And I don't know if this play isn't doing exactly the same thing. By presenting it as a truth, does he maybe subvert it, even for us?"

Roe is a proud, self-described feminist, but she doesn't see gender politics as the most interesting or important thing about Shrew, which opens at Vancouver's Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival on Thursday.

"Penelopiad, even just why it was written to begin with, stemmed from Atwood's interest in women and women's rights and women's stories. Taming of the Shrew, to me, does not fit into that lens particularly.

"Penny's all about women and powerlessness and finding power," says Roe, continuing to explain the contrast. "Shrew's kind of about a woman who has an enormous amount of power who fits in nowhere, and a guy who has an enormous amount of power who fits in nowhere, who suddenly find one another and find a perfect match. And for me, it's really more about not fitting into the world you exist in than what your gender assignment is. And how the role you're expected to play doesn't always line up with who you are."

Roe, 33, in her skinny jeans, T-shirt and Converse running shoes – on her tiny 4-foot-11 frame – could easily be mistaken at rehearsal for an interning theatre student. Until she speaks up, and it's clear – collaborative and collegial though the feeling in the rehearsal hall may be – she is in charge.

"I'm a bossy lady," she is fond of saying. Perhaps, but that bossiness is backed by talent, smarts, passion and humility, not to mention a strong work ethic. She is among the most important and celebrated women on the Vancouver theatre scene right now, currently up for two Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards – one for lead actress for The Arts Club Theatre's The Penelopiad; another for supporting actress in the small theatre category, for the Electric Company Theatre's All the Way Home.

"Meg Roe, in my view, is one of the great talents of Canadian theatre," says Bard on the Beach artistic director Christopher Gaze. "I think she's extraordinary."

Roe, who grew up north of Calgary on an acreage between Airdrie and Balzac, studied theatre at the University of Victoria before dropping out to join Theatre Junction's ensemble in Calgary. She was 22 when she starred as Juliet to Alessandro Juliani's Romeo at the Vancouver Playhouse. The off-stage romance that developed was not star-crossed, and Roe stayed in Vancouver, working steadily as both an actor and sound designer.

She had no aspirations to direct. But during rehearsals for Bard's 2006 production of Troilus and Cressida, Gaze observed Roe in action. The director had asked her, as sound designer (with Juliani), to figure something out, and she quickly took charge over a group of veteran actors. "'No, no, I think it's better if you come from over here, and on that line you need to sit down there, and everyone should turn around,'" Gaze recalls her saying. "She was suddenly, with clarity and ease, decisive, clear and imaginative. And so I thought, 'ah.'"

Gaze asked Roe to direct the 2008 production of The Tempest. She said no. He asked again. Just come up with a concept, he said, as an exercise. She did – and a director was born.

Roe's production included live musicians, and saw the drunken sailors Trinculo and Stephano transformed into a couple of Chardonnay-loving women who enslave Caliban in a different sort of way. The rookie director received raves.

Roe returned to Bard as director with Henry V in 2010 (more raves), and when Shrew came up for this season, Gaze knew he had his director.

"This is a good play to have a woman direct because of the difficulties of the play, let's face it," he says.

It appears Roe will be back for Bard's 25th season in 2014. The festival has a tradition of staging A Midsummer Night's Dream on anniversary years, and she has apparently pitched yet another compelling concept.

But up next after Shrew, Roe, the anti-diva, takes on opera star Maria Callas, directing Terrence McNally's Master Class for the Arts Club in September.

"I, as an actress, am attracted to strong women, and as an audience member, I'm attracted to interesting, complicated women," Roe says. "And Maria Callas – you don't get much more strong, interesting and complicated than her."

The Taming of the Shrew opens June 7 (currently in previews) and runs till Sept. 22 at Bard on the Beach ( bardonthebeach.org).