Sharon Pollock - Pollock's Life in The Theatre

Pollock's Life in The Theatre

When Pollock returned to Fredericton, she arrived just in time for the Beaverbrook Playhouse to open, a new theatre in town. Pollock found a job running the Playhouse Box Office. At the Playhouse Pollock, along with some of the members from the UNB Drama Society, formed “The Company of Ten”, which performed 6 shows in the 1964-65 season, then dissolved the following year. (81) During this time Pollock had begun dating fellow actor Michael Ball. In Calgary in 1965, Victor Mitchell had been starting up a Drama Department at the University of Calgary and offered Ball a position starting in January 1966.

Pollock followed Ball west, hoping that this move across Canada would allow her and her children the opportunity to start fresh, to leave the emotional baggage of her family behind her. The 1960s were a booming time in Canadian Theatre. There were regional theatres and festivals popping up all over the country. After their move to Calgary, Pollock and Ball began touring with Mitchell’s theatre group The Prairie Players. They traveled around small towns in Alberta performing in any space they could find. If they were lucky, the troupe would earn $35 a week. Shortly after, in 1967, Pollock joined the MAC 14 Theatre Society, which was the merge of The Musicians and Actors Club of Calgary and a theatre group called Workshop 14. The MAC 14 club was the founding Company of Theatre Calgary. In this same year, Pollock’s sixth child, Amanda, was born to Pollock and Ball. The '60s and early '70s were not easy for Pollock and her family. They lived in barely acceptable living conditions, on an extremely scarce income. In about 1967-68 Pollock began writing plays.

After having the opportunity to experience life as an actress, Sharon wanted to see what it was like to be on the writing and production side of theatre. Her main motivation to write instead of perform was the lack of Canadian playwrights. In expressing her determination to write Canadian plays Sharon says “I wanted other actors to stand up and say my words, to speak directly through an experience I shared with those other Albertans and Canadians.” Pollock was becoming frustrated with how even as an actor she rarely felt her voice was heard. Pollock was tired of reproducing others work and longed to hear a Canadian voice on stage. She was trying to fill a gap. The way theatre was those days she felt that no one even wanted to hear a Canadian voice, or a Canadian story. Pollock’s first work was Split Seconds in the Death of, a radio play that was broadcast on CBC on November 22, 1970. These were the days of radio, when a radio play drew a bigger audience than a theatre did. Already in this first script Pollock is pushing the boundaries of the realist narrative. Pollock followed Split Seconds in the Death of with two other Radioplays, 31 for 2 and We to the Gods both in 1971, all for CBC Radio.