Toronto actor Tamara Podemski, 31, is back home from Los Angeles to play Alice in the world theatrical première of Helen Humphreys’ novel Wild Dogs.
In Wild Dogs, adapted for the stage by Anne Hardcastle, Alice is on the run from a bad relationship. She joins five other people who gather each evening at the edge of the woods to call their dogs – dogs that have turned wild. Drawn together by need, this group is a community until violence strikes unexpectedly.
“Alice is the narrator of this story, about a summer that changed six peoples’ lives in a huge way,” Podemski says. “It is through Alice that we can really understand the heartache and the loss. Even though all of them are feeling similar experiences, Alice is the one that represents the story of love.”
Podemski, the winner of the Sundance Film Festival 2007 Special Jury Prize for Acting – the first Canadian and first aboriginal to win this prize – and who last year was nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for her work in the film Four Sheets to the Wind, brings a wealth of talent to the stage.
“I relate to Alice, probably a little too close for comfort, because we meet Alice as she is leaving a relationship, then falls in love. This love affair blows her entire universe open and turns her world upside down, her insides – inside out,” Podemski says.
“I can say that there has been a few times in my life where I jumped in head first and risked everything for love. It is terrifying to lose yourself in love, which I wish I didn’t know so well, but I do. That approach gets you hurt, but allows you to taste some of the most beautiful feelings in the world.”
Podemski graduated from the Claude Watson School for the Performing Arts in Toronto. Along with acting, she sings, writes songs and is a dancer. Her television and film credits include Dance Me Outside, The Rez, North of 60, Moose TV, Rabbit Fall and New Amsterdam. She’s performed in several theatre productions, including the original Canadian and Broadway productions of Rent.
Podemski was born to an Ojibwa mother and a Jewish Israeli father, and has two sisters, Sarah and Jennifer, both of whom are also actors. The three sisters were the subject of Jennifer’s CBC documentary Pamieci, about their trip to Lodz, Poland, with their grandfather, who went there to revisit his past and to come to terms with his family’s death in the Holocaust.
Raised by their dad, Podemski thinks of herself as very spiritual and has embraced both parents’ cultures. “We grew up in a very secular family. I’m in Israel every few years – half of my family is still there. I am much more connected with Israel and the culture than I am with a synagogue.
“Our whole upbringing was part of the socialist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair – my grandfather was part of it in Poland,” says Podemski. “Hashomer Hatzair has a winter and summer camp, so from six years old to 16 years old, we grew up in that movement – performing in the talent shows and choreographing routines.”
She recently returned from Berlin, where she was teaching workshops about Native studies. She experienced a kind of cultural collision there as her late Jewish grandmother was from the German city. She walked through the Jewish Quarter where her grandmother grew up. This was her chance to connect with her grandmother, as she was able to do in Poland with her grandfather, she says.
Podemski’s upcoming projects include the Native Theater Festival at the Public Theater in New York City and Marie Clement’s The Edward Curtis Project for Presentation House Theatre, as part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad at the Vancouver Olympics. Podemski will soon be recording her fourth album, for which she wrote all the songs.
Back in Toronto, she’s enjoying spending time with friends and family, who she hasn’t seen for a year. When living in Toronto in the past, Podemski ran a dance studio called Body Alive, teaching modern and jazz classes. Podemski will resume giving classes every Sunday while she’s here.
Wild Dogs is presented by Nightwood Theatre, in association with the Canadian Stage Company, and is directed by Kelly Thornton. The novel on which the play is based won the 2005 Lambda Award for fiction and was voted one of NOW magazine’s Top 10 books of 2004. The book’s film rights have been optioned.
Wild Dogs runs at Berkeley Street Theatre from Oct. 4 to Nov. 8. For tickets, contact 416-368-3110 or www.nightwoodtheatre.net. Tamara Podemski’s website address is www.tamarapodemski.com.