Megan Follows is in the trenches. She is making her directorial debut in Toronto this March with Jennifer Tremblay’s one-woman play The Carousel.
“Right now, we’re in this beautiful landscape of discovering and excavating the playwright’s words. It’s a process that can feel sometimes like being Alice down the rabbit hole,” says Follows during a phone interview after a long day of rehearsals.
But Follows is no stranger to production. She grew up in a theatrical family. Her parents were both actors, and her father was also a director, so she was always immersed in stories. “My parents had an absolute passion that their world was spellbinding and very beautiful,” says Follows. “Not easy, but beautiful.”
Her professional acting career began at nine years old when she was cast in a Bell Canada commercial. Follows had moved to Los Angeles when she was 11 — where she still has a home — and in 1979 was cast in the hit television series The Facts of Life. In 1985 she won the hearts of an international audience for her role as Anne Shirley, the talkative and precocious red-headed orphan in Anne of Green Gables (when you Google Follows’ name, her audition video is still one of the first things that comes up). And in 1986 she won the Gemini Award for best actress for this role.
“My parents tell me that, when I was very little, I watched some television program and said, ‘I can do that better,’ which is very arrogant of me, but there you go,” says Follows with a warm laugh. “Sometimes that gives you the impetus to go and make a fool of yourself, but why not.”
She was later cast in the sequel, Anne of Avonlea, and in 2000 she earned another Gemini nomination for best actress for her role as Anne Blythe in the third installation of the series.
But Follows has come a long way from Avonlea and is presently working on another, much racier, television series called Reign where she plays a murderous Catherine de’ Medici. She says that although acting and directing are very different, they share the same motivation. “Ultimately we’re working toward the same goal, which is storytelling,” says Follows.
The Carousel is a one-woman, one-act story told through a series of carousel rides and starring internationally acclaimed actor Allegra Fulton. Follows says the carousel is a metaphor of childhood and the fairgrounds are something stirring underneath it. “I think it is a beautifully articulated look at the very complex way interrelationships between generations work and what is handed down and what is passed along,” she says, an especially poignant observation from a woman whose life has unfolded in front of an audience and who was born into a family of actors.
“My approach to directing so far has been to try and come from a place of understanding and to find a common language,” she says. “But, it’s really being formulated as we speak. Right now we’re in the trenches.”
The Carousel opens today (Mar. 11) and runs through Mar. 30 at Berkeley Street Theatre.
