Sunday, December 02, 2007

This is a continuation of yesterday's blog with another photo essay from the December/January issue of VLM.



Christopher Gaze is best known as Artistic Director of Vancouver's Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. He has performed in England, in the US and across Canada. Born in England, he trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He moved to Vancouver in 1983 and in 1990 founded Bard on the Beach. Gaze also hosts Vancouver Symphony's Tea amd Trumpets series and traditional Christmas concerts. His numerous honours include: induction in the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame (2002) and Canada's Meritorious Service Medal (2005). He received a Jessie Award for best supporting actor for his performance in Equus at the Playhouse.

Christopher Gaze's life was transformed on December 1, 2000 when he married Jennifer McMahon. In 2008. Gaze is going to play the title role in Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear. The VLM interview was conducted in the Gaze bedroom during a mid-October Saturday morning. The Christopher and Jennifer Gaze Kitsilano apartment/townhouse has two floors. I was served a Japanese Genmaincha green tea that had taste overtones of popcorn.

Christopher, what is your favourite room?

I love our bedroom. That's where on Saturday or Sunday morning I get up(I'm first up; I am a morning man) and go upstairs to make the tea and up to the front door to get the papers. When Jennifer wakes, which is shortly thereafter, I take it all in and we lie on the bed and we read and drink our tea for as long as we can before we go out and run in Stanley Park.

How long have you lived here?

I bought it off Raffi in February 1999 and lived here with a bunch of boxes and bits of loose furniture. It all looked very odd, very much bachelor territory. Till I met Jennifer. She moved in, about 20 months later. She transformed it with beauty and light, colour and vitality. She chucked out all of my old boxes, a lot of stuff from days gone by, from both of us, and we kept what we needed and what we loved. It is one of the loveliest places I have ever lived.

What is it like to be in a bedroom that has a bay window by the corner of the bed?

It is beautiful to have the light. I am not bothered by the people outside. I don't think about them. In the springtime there are gorgeous cherry blossoms. And magnolia flowers, too. It's splendid, like living in paradise. When the morning sun comes in here and it bathes and warms it is gorgeous. In the summer it is luxurious and in the winter it is cozy.

What did Jennifer do to your bedroom?

I didn't own a bed. One of the first things we did, even before we became intimate, was to buy a bed. We bought a bed at Parker's. Fortunately Jennifer liked it a great deal. And it is the bed that became our matrimonial bed. And so it was perfect.

© 2007 VLM/Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

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