Few actors have been able define excellence in their career quite as impressively as Nicola Cavendish.

She’s workd across Canada, Seattle, and New York and has even planted herself for four years at the Shaw Festival. With Two Doras, One Gemini, and five Jessie Richardson Awards under her belt, one would swear the Okanagan Valley native is just warming up.

Nicola Cavendish is back in Toronto this month as Reta Winters in Carol Shield’s Unless adapted by the late author’s daughter Sarah Cassidy.

She’s a stage veteran that has succeeded for all the right reasons throughout her illustrious career. Nicola Cavendish isn’t afraid to give a director what is due for his/her contribution to a production and says there are at least two Canadian actors she’d hop on a plane to see work the stage.

What fascinates you most about the acting craft?
The heart in the material and the power that the stage still has.

And the way it can change people’s lives ultimately—what they listen to and what they pay attention to. It’s a tremendous resource.

Is acting an art that anyone can succeed at with training or are there natural traits one must possess to excel in this discipline?
I think it’s a combination of both.

There’s a lot of people who have worked terribly hard and spent a great deal of money on classes and schooling and more schooling and they can’t seem to be able to break into it.

That’s where a something called a divine gift steps up to the plate and becomes almost a vocation.

You see, it takes a bit madness to do what we do. The bottom line is that you have the gull and the temerity and the tenacity to stand in front of 400 people a night and be able to hold their attention and you believe you can.

And I don’t think it’s just about knowing how to deliver a line or knowing where to be or understanding the material inside out and upside down. You have to know about the investment required of your very soul.

Marlon Brando once stated that acting is the expression of a "neurotic impulse." Do you believe this is true?
No, I don’t.

There’s a great arena where one may play out the neurosis of characters but I think if an actor brings there own personal neurosis into the arena—no, I don’t believe that at all. That’s turning theatre into a kind of therapy session where there’s no professional around to really guide the parametres.

Acting is about being utterly vulnerable. Most people can’t be vulnerable in their day-to-day lives.

That’s one of the beauties of theatre. People come in off the street and are rendered by what they’re feeling, what they’re shown, what they’re made to feel. So actors have to be supremely vulnerable in order to invoke vulnerability in an audience. In order to be vulnerable you have to be able to willing to show your most pink underbelly—what you’re most frightened of. You have to be able to exchange your feelings for those of the audience members.

Who is more important to the production, the actor or director?
The director.

With Roy Surette, the director I’m working with now, he invites collaboration from everybody. Actors are not meant to be like pawns or made to feel that they don’t have something good to contribute from their mind, from their own personal experiences, from their history.

Therefore, the director has the power in terms of shaping the material but considers the input. He or she always has the ultimate reign.

But beyond that—the writer.

Tell me about a role that you played where something went horribly wrong on stage but you covered up the best you could.
I did a play a long time ago at Citadel Theatre in Edmonton called Top Girls by Carol Churchill.

And Act II goes to a very real English kitchen drama. There are cupboards, and tables, and counters, all the things that would make a full kitchen.

In this production, on this night, there happened to be a swag line that for some reason managed to escape from the fly floor and was hanging like a soft ‘U’ across the top of the stage just underneath the curtain and nobody noticed it.

The swag line caught the top of the kitchen cupboard unit. And the cupboard, still moving down stage on a truck, kept moving and moving until there was no swag line left.

The tautness actually caused it to flip so that the entire kitchen unit came crashing. With the cupboards falling, the counter falling, the fridge fell over. The entire set collapsed!

The wonderful Citadel Theatre stopped the show and a representative came out to say “Ladies and gentleman, we’re all going to have to take a break for a few minutes. Drinks are on the house!”

Name a stage actor that tops your list of all time favourites.
I’d travel to see Seana McKenna. I’d travel see Brent Carver.

Seana is so intelligent in the delivery of the material. And because she’s so honest. and because she moves me.

Brent has a special light about him. He’s like an imp or some unworldly being that’s on our planet.

What do you feel is the secret is to longevity in this business?
Time off.

This production, in particularly, demands a great deal from all of us but certainly it demands a great deal from me.

I said the other day I said “As soon as I finish this play in September in Victoria, I am booking off for the rest of the year until the following September because I need to.

There is a whole side to being an actor. The other side being the human being that likes to knit, or rock climb, or visit antique shows, or go on holidays. To discover things about yourself that you wouldn’t discover just inside the closed world of the script and a rehearsal room.

It’s about feeding and nurturing the person you are going to die with which is not just the actor.