Sascha Cole is thrilled to be playing three characters alongside veteran actors Kenneth Welsh and Fiona Reid in the Canadian Stage Company’s production of Tom Stoppard’s play Rock ’n’ Roll.
Sascha Cole in Tom Stoppard’s play Rock ’n’ Roll.
“I feel so lucky and so thankful. I just try to be a sponge in the best way possible, trying to learn as much as I can from them by watching them work. They are amazing onstage together, and I feel really blessed to be part of the show,” Cole, 25, says.
Rock ’n’ Roll, in Toronto at the Bluma Appel Theatre until Oct. 24, was a hit on Broadway and in London’s West End. It begins just after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Jan, played by Shaun Smyth, is a Jewish rock music enthusiast and student at Cambridge University in England. He returns to his Czech homeland, where rock music is censored by the Communist government. While there, he takes up the cause of a local band called the Plastic People of the Universe, which lands him in prison.
Cole plays Gillian, a student of classical literature at Cambridge University; Magda, a law student in Prague and the girlfriend of Jan, and her third character, Deirdre, is a student in the 1990s.
“I have three supporting roles throughout the play, and I get to come in at each time period. It is really amazing and challenging to work on this Tom Stoppard play in a way that I have [not] ever been challenged before as an actress,” Cole says. “His writing is extremely intellectual.
“As a company, we spent the first four days of rehearsal just talking about the ideas in the play and researching as much as possible, so that we could completely understand what these characters are talking about and where they’re coming from. I wasn’t alive when these events were happening, I have just heard about it in passing from my parents… now, I’ve had the opportunity to really understand what was happening in the ’60s – rock ’n’ roll, communism, Prague Spring, prior to the invasion and the Czechoslovakian invasion.”
A graduate of the National Theatre School in Montreal, Cole, now living in Toronto, also studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England, last summer.
Her stage credits include TeAmim Theatre’s Ten Green Bottles, Whale Music, The Tin Drum: Book One, A Flea in Her Ear and Twelfth Night. On television, Cole appeared in the CBC production The Great War, and in Manson, which was aired on the History Channel.
Cole’s family has a long tradition in the local arts scene. Her aunt, Susan Cole, is the entertainment editor of NOW magazine. Another aunt, Ellen Cole, is the executive director of the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre. Before going to school in England, Cole worked as the receptionist at the JCC for three years.
“Theatre for me is really fun, but when I’m not doing that I read a lot of fiction,” Cole says. “I just went travelling by myself for the first time to London and Paris, and now I have the travel bug.”
For tickets to Rock ’n’ Roll at the Bluma Appel Theatre, call 416-368-3110 or Ticketmaster at 416-872-1111. The production moves to Edmonton for a Nov. 7 to 29 run at the Citadel Theatre. 780-425-1820.