Usually in repertory theatre, if you take on one big role, you alternate with a smaller part in another play. But Chris Lam is juggling two gargantuan roles—not to mention holding down two day jobs, as a stock associate and a mover—at Ensemble Theatre Company this summer.

For starters, he’s playing the lead in A Prayer for Owen Meany, a role that, as any reader of the original John Irving novel knows, has character quirks that will demand some special attention from Lam.

“In the Irving novel they describe his high-pitched voice, and I have a voice coach working with me on it,” Lam tells the Straight over the phone on one of his rare breaks during the day. “It has to be vocally safe for me to do every single night. I have to speak in that voice for the entire play, in this high falsetto. So it’s almost like a singing part, like I’m singing for two-and-a-half hours. It’s a very, very technical part, like training for a marathon. I really as an actor just have to build to it.”

He figures he’s only off-stage for five minutes combined during the play, a 1960s-set tale of friendship and faith. And that would be enough to fill any actor’s summer, but Lam will be alternating the role with that of composer Dmitri Shostakovich in Master Class, David Pownall’s clever four-hander about Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his culture minister confronting two nonconformist artists (the other being Sergei Prokofiev).

“In a way it’s even harder,” Lam reveals of his role as the Russian composer. “None of the four characters leave the stage, and even when I’m not speaking I’m actively listening the whole time.

“The characters are 180 degrees from each other,” he adds of Meany and Shostakovich. “Owen Meany is very opinionated and speaks in this very interesting voice.…Shostakovich is very quiet, very passive. And I actually have to play the piano—some of his actual pieces.” At least Lam didn’t have to learn how to do that: he already plays.

While such demands might send most performers into the fetal position, Lam is loving every minute of this summer’s challenge—his first with ETC and his first performing in repertory (though he has directed in repertory before). “As an actor I feel I have my entire range utilized,” says the apparently indefatigable Lam. “I’m very grateful. I feel very fulfilled, and the writing is very strong, with a lot of depth. I really want to make sure I do justice to these parts because they’re so well-written.”