Fall arts preview 2015: Actor Meaghan Chenosky feels alive on-stage

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      “When my mom passed away, I had some struggles with mental health,” actor Meaghan Chenosky admits. “It was just complicated and hard and I dealt with it in some weird ways. I had a pretty bad habit with masochism, cutting stuff. And eating-disorder things.” Asked what eating disorder she suffered from, she laughs ruefully. Apparently, she had a large skill set.

      Chenosky was just 16 and living in London, Ontario, when her mom died. A few years later, a high-school teacher suggested that she audition for UBC’s BFA acting program, and she saw it as an opportunity to change her life. Chatting with the Straight in the Hamilton Street arts space where she is rehearsing The Best Laid Plans: A Musical, which Touchstone Theatre and Patrick Street Theatre are coproducing at the York from September 19 to October 3, the performer remembers arriving in Vancouver: “I got off the plane and everything smelled like lilacs or something.”

      Accepted into the program, she soon started working with acting prof Stephen Heatley, who taught her a lesson that has been a huge help in both her life and her art. “ ‘You are enough’ is kind of Stephen’s thing,” she explains. “As an actor, you don’t have to show anybody that you’re making a choice, you can just make it. So I try to honour the text and what’s going on with the character rather than making it important that people are watching me. And, as a human being, you don’t have to be happy; you can be a little sad, if you’re sad.

      “It sounds easy,” she goes on. “In fact, it was pretty horrifying. On one of the first days of classes, I had to stand in front of everybody and say, ‘Meaghan Chenosky. I am enough.’ I was just riddled with scars and I was mortified. I was like, ‘Okay. Clearly, I have some work to do.’ ”

      Because she realized that nobody else was going to do the work for her, she started therapy, which is an ongoing project. She established solid friendships in Vancouver’s theatre community. And she honed her craft.

      In 2014, when she was just three years out of UBC, she won the supporting-actress Jessie in the small-theatre stream for her work as the abused Dottie in Itsazoo Productions’ Killer Joe. She has also appeared, notably, in Solo Collective’s Small Parts and Delinquent Theatre’s Stationary: A Recession-Era Musical.

      Asked why she loves theatre, she replies: “I think that existing can be a bit on the lonely side. Day in, day out, there are so many people in the world and we all pass each other so fast. And we all have that deep ache to just know each other. In my idea, that’s love: just seeing each other and acknowledging it. And I think, in the theatre, it’s there to watch. You get to see connection. You get to see the point of being alive.”

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