Grad Profile
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
As You Like It, Act II, Scene VI
Famed Actor is Festival Patron
PHOTOS FROM THE WILLIAM HUTT COLLECTION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH LIBRARY
After spending months on the stage during a production, William Hutt, H.D.Let. ’73, says the closing of a play often finds him “in my own house wondering who the hell I am.”
“The stage has become my home,” he told an audience at U of G in September, when he was introduced as honorary patron of the “Shakespeare — Made in Canada” festival. The festival runs until June 10 and is a joint project of the University, the City of Guelph, Guelph Arts Council and the Stratford Festival, where Hutt has been a company member since 1953.
“An actor’s life is not so easily left behind,” he said. “An actor does not inhabit but is inhabited by a character.” With a smile, he added: “It takes time after a play closes to recognize that you are a completely different person. So you try to develop a character that you can live with at home.”
In his 57-year theatrical career, Hutt has lived on the stage with more of William Shakespeare’s characters than any other leading actor in the world has. He has performed at Stratford and elsewhere in all but three of Shakespeare’s plays — some of them several times and most in lead roles.
His 2005 performance in The Tempest was his fourth portrayal of the wizard ruler Prospero.
“It’s an extraordinary world — Shakespeare — to be involved in all that time,” said Hutt. “Each time you portray a character, you understand more about the playwright. You are older, wiser, and can bring your own life experiences to it.”
As Canada’s foremost classical actor, he may well know Shakespeare better than anyone else in the country does.
“The essential genius of William Shakespeare is his use of language itself,” said Hutt, who is revered for his own “Canadian” style of interpreting the Bard’s words. “Shakespeare also explored many eras of time, different mores and folkways, different civilizations.”
His plays remain popular because they lend themselves to ongoing interpretation and adaptation, added Hutt. “The ‘Made in Canada’ festival is evidence of that.”
In 1961, he appeared as an Inuit King Lear who used his vantage point at the North Pole to divide up the whole world. The actor also recalls a production of Twelfth Night set in India and Romeo and Juliet dressed as 1920s flappers.
“All different eras and costumes have been loaded into Shakespeare’s plays over the centuries, and it’s quite acceptable,” said Hutt. “Shakespeare lends himself to that, and he doesn’t mind.”
Photos from the William Hutt Collection in the University of Guelph Library.