WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020 | THEGLOBEANDMAILO A
M
eet Canada’s Harry Potter,
Hermione Granger and Ron
Weasley.
Trevor White, Sarah Afful and
Gregory Prest are set to star as the
grown-up versions of these famous
J.K. Rowling characters in the com-
ing Toronto production ofHarry
Potter and the Cursed Child– a play
presented in two parts that pro-
ducer David Mirvish calls “the
largest undertaking Mirvish Pro-
ductions has ever done.”
“The casting process was the
most intensive ever conducted by
us, which requires actors to not on-
ly display their acting talents but
also their physical prowess due to
the intensive choreography and
special effects in the production,”
Mirvish said, adding that more
than 1,000 performers from across
the country were auditioned.
On Wednesday, Mirvish and co-
producers Sonia Friedman and Co-
lin Callender announced an all-
Canadian cast for this first Cana-
dian production of the Tony- and
Olivier-winning stage sequel to
Rowling’s beloved books, which
will open in previews on Oct. 23 at a
refurbished Ed Mirvish Theatre.
White, an actor from British Co-
lumbia who has lived and mostly
worked in England for the past two
decades, will play the title wizard –
no longer a boy in the show, but
grown up and with children of his
own.
His credits include work at the
Royal Shakespeare Company and
on the West End, but also playing
the title role inPericlesat Bard on
the Beach in Vancouver in 2003.
Afful is well known to Stratford
Festival audiences from her six sea-
sons there; she was recently nomi-
nated for a Dora Mavor Moore
award for playing the lead role in
Soulpepper’sOrlando– and just
completed a turn as Calpurnia in
Julius Caesarat Crow’s Theatre.
Prest, meanwhile, is one of the
most beloved members of the Soul-
pepper ensemble, known for his
memorable comic turns in plays
fromBed & BreakfasttoLa Bête,as
well as more dramatic roles inFa-
ther Comes Home From the Warsand
Angels in America.
Many other well-known Cana-
dian stage actors are in the cast,
such as Trish Lindstrom (Miranda
to Christopher Plummer’s Prospero
inThe Tempestat Stratford) as Gin-
ny Potter and Brad Hodder (eight
seasons at Stratford) as Draco Mal-
foy.
But much of the two-part play
centres on the children of the
aforementioned characters. Emerg-
ing actors in the cast include Luke
Kimball, a recent graduate of the
Ryerson Theatre School, who will
play Harry’s youngest son, Albus;
Hailey Alexis Lewis, who’s been
working steadily since graduating
from Sheridan College, as Her-
mione and Ron’s daughter, Rose;
and Thomas Mitchell Barnet, cur-
rently playing Sam Lesser on the
Netflix showLocke and Key, as Dra-
co’s son, Scorpius Malfoy.
Fiona Reid, the Canadian stage
legend, and Sara Farb, whose five
seasons at Stratford included play-
ing Juliet and Anne Frank, have
both spent a year in the Broadway
production ofHarry Potter and the
Cursed Child; they will return to To-
ronto to play Professor McGonagall
and Delphi Diggory, respectively.
Steven Sutcliffe, a Shaw Festival
and Stratford Festival veteran who
was in the original Broadway cast
ofRagtime, is set to play Severus
Snape.
With a cast of 39 in total,Harry
Potter and the Cursed Child– which
is written by Jack Thorne, directed
by John Tiffany and based on an
original story by Rowling, Thorn
and Tiffany – is a very expensive
show to produce. On Broadway,
where it opened in 2018, it cost
about US$68.5-million – a price tag
that included renovations to the
Lyric Theatre – making it the most
expensive non-musical play ever to
run on the Great White Way.
Mirvish is keeping mum on the
exact cost of the Canadian produc-
tion – and the plot is, likewise,
closely guarded, with audience
members asked to #KeepTheSe-
crets since the two-part play first
premiered in London in 2016.
Toronto will be the sixth city in
the world to seeThe Cursed Child–
which is playing on London’s West
End, on Broadway, in San Francis-
co, in Melbourne, Australia, and
will soon open in Hamburg, Ger-
many.
Tickets go on sale on April 4 at
9:45 a.m. – which is a reference to
the platform at King’s Cross Station
where the Hogwarts Express de-
parts.Mirvishreveals
all-Canadiancast
forHarryPotter
andtheCursed
ChildinToronto
J. KELLY NESTRUCKI
’m about to begin my fifth season of tree plant-
ing. Each year, around this time, I have mixed
feelings about the job. Never have I loved a job so
much while simultaneously hating it with a fero-
cious passion. Before a season, after being nestled up
in the coziness of my home for the winter months, I
begin to romanticize and crave the challenges of life
in the bush, along with the friendships and adven-
ture that comes with it. When I start planting, how-
ever, I am filled with instant regret.
Tree planting is piece work, and where I plant –
mainly on the coast of British Columbia – I generally
get paid between 25 and 45 cents a tree. If you work
hard enough, the job can be lucrative: It gives plant-
ers the opportunity to lead a nomadic lifestyle,
spending a few months filling their bank accounts
and then pursuing whatever they want to do till next
season. But there are many challenges that get in the
way of these potential profits.
In the early hours of the morning, we join our
crews – usually six to 12 men and women dressed in
long johns, spandex, dress shirts, straw hats, head-
bands, ripped up jeans, hard hats and
whatever it takes to mitigate the hard-
ships of planting. Some of us will be
covered in duct tape (sometimes I
have to duct tape my nipples to pre-
vent painful chaffing), bug nets, sun-
screen, baby powder, bug spray and
dirt, lots of dirt.
Our convoy of trucks (or occasional
helicopter ride) travel rugged logging
roads deep into the woodlands. Dur-
ing the ride, we prepare ourselves for
the brutish challenges that lay ahead.
Some smoke things or use stimulants,
while others take energy drinks and
painkillers. My drug of choice is podcasts, which
seems to be the perfect remedy for the misery of the
bush.
When we step out of the trucks, often in the pour-
ing rain, we’re faced with the ultimate jungle gym: a
steep chunk of land that’s just been logged. In front
of us will be a gnarly hillside covered with piles of
logs, bushes, mounds of branches and scattered de-
bris, all of which form booby traps that torment tree
planters with endless trips and falls. I will stare at this
hillside in awe and reluctance, “How am I going to do
this?”
But I am there to make money, so I quickly step
into the rain and fill my bags with hundreds of tiny
trees. The conversations with my crew become stra-
tegic with a few jokes and shenanigans thrown in to
boost morale. Seasoned tree-planters treat this
more like a sport than a job, and competition fills the
air.
Once our bags are full, we suppress any reluctance
and charge up that godforsaken hillside. We try to
plant a tree every few seconds, bending over thou-
sands of times in a day. We jump from log to log, and
if they roll out from under our feet, we grab onto
branches – or anything within reach – and swing
around like wannabe Tarzans. We push through
stinging nettle, devil’s club and blackberry bushes.We stumble and fall constantly, always pushing our-
selves to go faster amidst swarms of insects that we
often inhale. The craziest among us will sporadically
plant naked.
And we always come home with stories to tell.
Last year, I managed to accidentally step on a can
of bear spray with caulk boots (forestry boots with
sharp metal spikes on the bottom). It exploded and
the fierce pressure sent the spray directly into my
eyes and all over my body. It was an excruciating ex-
perience.
Others experience far worse. One of my foremen
survived a bear attack a few summers ago. Another
was almost killed by the blades of an unstable hel-
icopter. And daily miseries get to us all: Sometimes
planters wander into hornet nests, and then try to
escape, thrashing and flailing over the obstacle
course of logs. We get delusional in the heat, nurse
severe cramps that can last through the night, suffer
fits of anger and occasional breakdowns.
To contrast these miseries, majestic moments are
always waiting. I recall, during the onset of my first
planting season, laying in my tent one
night, listening in reverence and won-
der to a pack of wolves howling in the
distance. The season afterward I recall
coming across a bobcat that was sit-
ting and calmly staring at us.
But something else lurks on those
hillsides. There is a deep solitude that
comes with tree planting, a solitude
that can push you to the edge of your-
self. I’ve worked with a 62-year-old tree
planting legend named Grant – be-
lieved to have planted more than sev-
en million trees in 40 years. “You be-
come an animal up there,” he once
told me. And he’s right.
Spending too much time amid the daily comforts
and secure environments of civilized life makes it
easy to fall prey to the notion that we know our-
selves. But these portrayals often crumble when put
to the test. While tree planting, I am confronted with
someone else; a self I thought I knew. It is a person I
try to come to peace with on those hillsides, during
those strange days of isolation and contemplation.
Grant is relentless in his drive to plant trees (he
chews on ginseng roots all day for energy) and he’s
one of the fastest planters I know. Once he got
caught in a rockslide while planting and broke his
back. It took him years to recover, but he came back
stronger than ever. And his passion for the job – and
the type of people it attracts – reminds me of what it
is I love about it.
Tree planting is a laboratory of self-examination
and a spectacle of self-growth. You master your
mind, confronting the worst and the best in your na-
ture, pushing yourself as hard as you can into new
horizons of your character. A new version of yourself
awaits at the end of the experience.
And after sleeping in a tent all summer, you learn
to never take your bed for granted.BrandonKornelsonlivesinNewWestminster,B.C.ACHANCETOGROW
ILLUSTRATIONBYBRANDONKORNELSONTreeplantingontheB.C.coastisatoughjob,buttheisolationandchallenges
itbringshaveallowedmetobetterknowmyself,BrandonKornelsonwritesFIRST PERSONWejumpfromlogto
log,andiftheyroll
outfromunderour
feet,wegrabonto
branches–or
anythingwithin
reach–andswing
aroundlike
wannabeTarzans.Haveastorytotell?Pleaseseetheguidelinesonourwebsitetgam.ca/essayguide,
[email protected]FirstPersonisadailypersonalpiecesubmittedbyreadersNEWS |TODAY’S SUDOKU SOLUTION TODAY’S KENKEN SOLUTION