Ian Lake used to be a king. Now he’s a shepherd. And sometimes a prince. Lake, 27, is currently in his third season at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He’s played Berowne, a lord, in Love’s Labour Lost, Demetrius in a Midsummer Night’s Dream and is currently playing Silvius, a shepherd, in As You Like It and Florizel, a prince, in The Winter’s Tale.
Ian Lake
And he doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon.
“I always want to do Shakespeare. I want to do it all, but I will always want to do Shakespeare,” the actor said.
Lake studied at the University of Victoria’s theatre program before moving on to the National Theatre School of Canada and the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre, where he got to play the lead in Macbeth. He was first introduced to Shakespeare as a child, while at the theatre with his mother.
“My mother brought me to see plays growing up in Vancouver, but I didn’t understand it yet,” he said.
Lake’s high school education did nothing to help.
“In high school, I was introduced to [Shakespeare’s plays] as literature. It was really quite excruciating and boring.”
It wasn’t until Lake’s first year of theatre school that something clicked.
“The first play I ever did [in theatre school] was The Winter’s Tale…We were exploring this play that none of us knew, because it’s not often done. It’s not Romeo and Juliet or a Midsummer Night’s Dream. And it was really amazing,” he said.
“It wasn’t until doing that play that I started to get a stronger sense of what’s really inside the language [of Shakespeare’s plays] and how it can be used and not feared.”
According to Lake, who teaches at high schools through Stratford’s educational programming, the key to understanding Shakespeare is not taking his words too literally.
“I realized these are words that don’t have a single literal meaning. One person might read a line and have gleaned a meaning from it, and another person might get an entirely different sense and neither one of them is going to be right or wrong,” he said.
For Lake, who grew up in Vancouver, there was never really an alternative to acting. At least, not one that he wanted to pursue.
“It’s sort of the age old story, when I was a kid I was always dressing up, eventually I just never stopped,” he joked, explaining that he enjoyed acting in high school plays.
“It just never really felt like there was any choice. I couldn’t think of anything else I would want to do,” he said.
To Lake, acting is an exploration of human nature, something that changes with every role and scene.
“There’s just a sort of curiosity about human nature and how to bring a piece of theatre to life and a piece of dialogue to life,” he said. “[It’s exploring] how the body works, how the mind works. It’s not like there’s ever a point where you have soaked up the necessary knowledge. For every play you’re doing, there’s an infinite number of areas you’re going to explore.”
As Lake, who comes from a secular Jewish family, became involved in the acting community, he began to miss his ties to his religion.
“I was always raised in a very secular household. We weren’t going to temple all the time, but we were members of a very strong Jewish community,” he said. “I realized in my acting world, I don’t have a lot of Jewish friends…In my adult life, I’ve felt that slipping away, my sense of having a community, specifically a Jewish community, around me.”
It was partly because of these feelings that Lake participated in a Birthright Israel trip this past winter.
“It was a bit of a rediscovery because there was a lot about myself as a Jew I didn’t really know,” he said. “I think I came back with a stronger sense of self. Not only as a Jew, but just in general.”
This sense of identity has helped Lake grow as an actor, he said.
“For any actor, you’re bringing yourself into a role. The better you can know yourself, the more you’ll be able to do that,” he said.
The Winter’s Tale runs at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival until Sept. 25 and As You Like It runs until Oct. 31. For tickets or more information, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.