Bert Peddle

Coffee with... -

For over 30 years, air traffic controller Bert Peddle has pursued a sideline career as an actor. Through his involvement with the Avion Players in Gander, he's tackled many roles, varying from youthful roles in his earliest days to performances as fatherly figures in more recent fare.

Community theatre thrives on committed volunteers, and Mr. Peddle has remained a fixture for Avion by also offering his help behind the scenes when required.

While it has all been good fun for the lifelong resident of Gander, his worked has reaped rewards. At this year's 60th Annual Drama Festival in Corner Brook, Mr. Peddle received the Honourary Chairman's Award as best actor for his portrayal of Stanley in Avion's most recent production, the British farce Caught in the Net.

Q: What was your first experience with theatre?

A: My first play I did at high school was for winter carnival in December 1975 at Gander Collegiate. It was directed by Wayne Hurley. He's the one that really got me involved. He was one of the English and drama teachers there at the time.

A crowd of us from the volleyball team got involved with the theatre group. There were two of us - myself and Percy Farwell - who were involved in that play and are still active in theatre, 35 years later.

Q: What was your role in the play?

A: I was a teacher in the play called 20th Century Lullaby.

Q: Can you remember what that experience was like? Was it something that always interested you, or was it just a case where you were willing to give this a try?

A: I'd always been doing skits and things like that in the school for class work. I'd written a play that year for a year-end assignment for my Grade 11 diploma. I was always interested in theatre, and that was my first time on stage, and I guess I got the bug from there.

The following year I did a play with Avion Players in the provincial drama festival, and I've been active pretty much ever since.

Q: How long have you been with Avion now?

A: In 1975 I did the high school play, so I graduated in 1976. I spent one-year in university where I didn't do a play, which was 1977, but I did some drama classes in first-year university.

I did my first play with Avion in 1978, the fall production. In 1979 I was at my first provincial drama festival. That summer, I was in St. John's doing some summer classes at university, and some guys called me to play in a baseball tournament on the west coast in Stephenville.

I went to Stephenville to play baseball for a weekend, and hitchhiked my way there with a gym bag and clothes, all ready for baseball. On the Sunday, when the tournament was over, I stopped into Grenfell College, where they had their first ever Stephenville Theatre Festival, the inaugural year.

Wayne Hurley and Gordon Ralph were both enrolled in the school, and the artistic director at the time was Maxim Mazumdar, who had been the adjudicator for the provincial drama festival that year.

They had a bunch of roles they needed to fill, because they had two plays that year - The Man Who Came to Dinner and Macbeth. I ended up staying in Stephenville for six weeks going to theatre school, so I was an original cast member for the Stephenville Theatre Festival.

Q: Do you find there are any certain kinds of roles you gravitate towards more than others?

A: I guess my strength is comedy. The whole group with the Avion Players is really good at comedy and British farce. We've had our most success there, and it draws the biggest audiences as well.

Although, we've done quite a few dramas as well. Dramas with an undertone of humour or comedy are my favourite.

Someone Who'll Watch Over Me is a play we did in 1999, I think. It had three hostages in a basement in Beirut. There was an American, I played the Irishman, and there was an Englishman. We were all chained to walls in a basement. It was sort of a dark play, but it had comedic undertones as well. That was a real fun play to do.

Q: It seems like with comedy there's a fine-line between good comedy and bad comedy - it can either be something that's really funny or falls flat. What do you think is an important element to ensuring something that's meant to be funny is funny?

A: Experimenting, workshopping it, and performing it several different ways ... The feeling you get from the audience will help you think of a new way to do something or try something out.

You can't try too much adlibbing onstage or you'll throw-off the other actors, but sometimes you just go with the flow of the way the audience is feeling. I seem to have a knack for doing that. I like to take the audience with me and try not to be a ham. When you get the audience rolling, you try to keep it that way.

One of my favourite things with theatre, whether it's farce or drama, whatever, it's the feedback from the audience - it's something special. I've worked in a couple of films as well, and it's just not the same - sitting around for hours and hours, waiting for the right light and for your scene to come up. It's not the same as live theatre.

Q: You mentioned the play with the three hostages. Is that what you'd consider to be your favourite amongst the plays you've done?

A: I don't know. I'd say I've done 60-70 plays over the years. One of my favourites, for sure, is The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged). As Loved Our Fathers was a drama about Newfoundland joining confederation, and that's another favourite. A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The first play I did with Avion Players was called The Gaydon Chronicles, and it had a lot of the old-timers - Jim Lewis, Ross Goldsworthy, Kevin Blackmore built the set, Kathy Priddy. Just a great cast, and it was a really good play written by a Newfoundland playwright, Michael Cook.

I like Newfoundland plays, I like comedy, I like Shakespeare, Sir Peter Shaffer - we've done Equus. All ends of the spectrum. I've done small roles, lead roles, in-between roles, set building - just about everything involved.

Q: You just mentioned a lot of names there. Being involved with Avion for so long, I guess there has been an opportunity to get to know a lot of different people in the community?

A: Absolutely. The theatre festivals are a great learning experience too. While I lived and worked in Grand Falls-Windsor too, I performed with the Northcliffe Drama Club. I was there for three years, so I did some shows with them. While I was doing air traffic control school is probably the only break I've taken from acting.

I've gotten to work with a lot of great people. The workshops are always great experiences. The adjudicators always give workshops, and you get critiqued on your own plays. I've workshopped plays with Gordon Pinsent. (Canadian actor) R.H. Thompson adjudicated an international festival in Victoria, B.C. that we went to.

The Avion Players have had the chance to represent Canada in international festivals. We went to Benton Harbour, Michigan. We did a play there called On the Rib of the Curve. There were 27 countries at that theatre festival. We hosted an international festival here too in 1993. I think there were 18 countries involved in that.

So yeah, from R.H. Thompson and Gordon Pinsent to Graham Greene, I've met a lot of great people.

Jerry Doyle from St. John's was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which he did here in Gander for the provincial festival in 1979 or 1980. It was fantastic.

When you see good acting, you want to learn that much more. I wasn't that good starting out, but as you grow into it, you learn more from people and get better at it. People who haven't had a lot of formal training learn from the people they work beside.

Q: One of the major elements of live theatre is the fact it's live, and anything can happen. Have there ever been any hairy moments you can recall from the past?

A: There have been a few, but I wouldn't want to name names [laughs]. I've had my own blanks, and people have helped me along. I've certainly seen that deer in the headlights look where someone has completely lost where they are, and you have to make up a bunch of dialogue or actions.

Especially when someone jumps ahead three or four pages and critical information is missed, you've got to go back over it and make sure everything gets in there.

One of the funniest things was in a play called Moose Murders. I wasn't onstage for this one, but someone was supposed to come out and they couldn't speak. They were trying to let the audience and the people onstage know who the murderer was. It was supposed to be the guy in a wheelchair, and there was supposed to be a hula-hoop onstage behind the guy in the wheelchair, but someone forgot to bring the hula-hoop onstage, so as the dialogue went along, you could see the panic. Then, a door opened, and this hula-hoop came sliding off from the wings.

That sort of thing happens, and you always have fun trying to throw each other off. Our rehearsals are fairly rigorous. They take six to eight weeks, three hours a night, five nights a week. It's a big commitment, and not something to be taken on lightly.

Q: Particularly I guess when you have work commitments too?

A: That's the difficult part of it. Sometimes, the rehearsals take a little longer, or things get delayed. When you've got an emergency room doctor in a play, sometimes it doesn't always work out. We manage to make it work somehow. We do the best we can, and we've had great success.

Q: Who would you say is the person you most enjoy sharing scenes with?

A: It's hard to pick. In comedies, I know myself and Wayne Hurley and Percy Farwell have been great friends - me and Percy as kids, and Wayne as a teacher in high school. We have a really good rapport with each other onstage and react well to each other.

In later years, Michele Dove. We've done some great shows together, and we seem to have that same rapport. We just look at each other. Listening in theatre, of course, is a big part of it as well. You've got to listen to what the other person is saying and get the emotion of what they're feeling, and feed off of it. I've had some great scenes with Michele.

Annette Crummey - I hate to just start naming names, because I know I'm going to forget someone, because we've had some great ones. Lloyd White, and Bob Kelly in the play we did, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me - that was just the three of us onstage. You didn't have a whole lot of physical movement - three-feet of chain each - so it was about the emotion back-and-forth. That was something special as well.

Q: Is there anything you'd still like to get a chance to do yet, in terms of acting?

A: Still looking to get whatever comes along. I know the roles I get now are for older people, but there's always roles I'd like to do. I do not have anything special in mind. I'll keep an open mind for anything we read. I'm always looking for something new, something challenging. I'd like to give The Odd Couple a try. Maybe when I retire I'll do professional theatre - that's been a goal of mine.

info@ganderbeacon.ca