Where does Susan Hogan end and Annie Iverson begin?
Given the number of times Hogan seems to channel Annie – the character she portrays in Kayak – during our interview, it’s not a far-fetched question.
“She’s just such a rich, beautiful character, and sure, she makes mistakes, we all make mistakes, and – ha! That sounds like Annie.” Hogan’s laugh rings through the phone one sunny morning in late December. “That sounds like something she would say.”
Hogan is a familiar face to fans of genre television, film, and movie-of-the-weeks. Her IMDB filmography lists nearly 100 different roles, and includes Battlestar Galactica (her husband, Michael Hogan, was a series regular), Warehouse 13, Life Unexpected, The L Word, and Robert Redford’s locally shot drama The Company You Keep. She logged 130 episodes of Canada’s first soap opera, Family Passions, and 100 episodes of Night Heat.
While Hogan’s known ’round the world for her on-screen roles, the BC-based thespian (a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada) has never veered far from the stage.
In Kayak – which kicks off its Firehall Arts Centre run this week – Hogan inhabits a role that hits countless notes: humour; grief; culpability; love.
And she hits every single one of these notes while seated in a kayak.
It’s a role (and vessel) Hogan’s inhabited before, when Alley Theatre first mounted Jordan Hall’s emotionally charged Kayak as part of the 2013 rEvolver Festival.
Here’s how Alley Theatre describes the one-act play in its marketing material: “In Kayak, BMW-driving, bleached-blond Annie Iverson teeters alone on a vast stretch of water. Having set out to save her son from the dangers of his radical environmentalist girlfriend, she unwittingly throws herself into a path of events larger than she could ever have imagined. In a time when green is the new black, Kayak is a witty, provocative and deeply personal perspective on the global environmental crisis.”
Nearly two years after its rEvolver run, five years after its premiere, and in the wake of the Kinder Morgan standoff on Burnaby Mountain, Kayak is more relevant than ever before, according to its star.
“People will feel Burnaby Mountain immediately when the play starts to unfold,” says Hogan, who was nominated for a Jessie Award for her portrayal. “I think it’s a real eye-opener. We all have to take action, because our action, or inaction, will be felt eventually, and it’s not that many years away.”
Kayak has certainly opened Hogan’s eyes to our planet’s precarious state. “This play has focused that for me as far as being more vocal and changing my own ways, although I don’t feel I’m doing enough yet, but it’s coming,” she says, before chuckling.
“I sound like Annie again,” she says after a pause. “I’m doing small things, and I’m trying, but I’m also realizing, as the character does by the end, that you’ve got to take bigger steps.”
Hogan is a multi-medium (film, TV, stage) artist, and while each medium requires a different skill set, there’s plenty of crossover. Hogan carries techniques forged in theatre to her on-screen gigs; she can get where she needs to get emotionally, quickly, because theatre has afforded her the opportunity to develop shortcuts for intense internal work.
“You can come up with the goods that are real and organic without just layering something on,” says Hogan, who is currently developing Eve, a one-woman show, with veteran Vancouver theatre-maker James Fagan Tait.
“You can see it immediately, especially on the big screen,” adds Hogan. “You look in the eyes of the actor, and they’re empty. They’re just going through the motions, but if you have a way to access that stuff in a quicker manner, and it’s still real, and still relevant, you’re ahead of the game.”
As for her return to Annie and Kayak, Hogan hopes that audiences will leave the theatre at the end of each performance compelled to action.
“I would like them to come out thinking strongly about all the issues that come up in the play, and feeling so passionately about it that they’re not afraid to pit their ideas against other people,” says Hogan. “If they were walking out of the theatre arguing with each other about the issues that come up in the play, I would be very happy.”
• Kayak is directed by Rachel Peake and runs until Jan. 17 at the Firehall Arts Centre.
