I ended up going to the Etobicoke School of the Arts and, uh,
my mother frequently says that that saved my life.
It was great...
It also had a downside for me, though. Umm... I was so interested in theatre and wanted to perform. Like most people, you start off wanting to be an actor, I want to be an actor and,
uh, I came up against all these other fabulous, amazing actors and women who could cry on demand and things that I couldn't do. So my,
umm, confidence in myself actually plummeted quite a bit and I became one of the people at the school who actually didn't do much. I was also double major,
uh, in... In music and I played the cello, which I loved dearly,
umm...
But again, once I got into my music classes, I discovered that I was with people who had had private lessons all their lives,
they owned their own instruments, they belonged to the Toronto Youth Symphony and I was miles behind them.
(laughs)
So I sort of took a double hit on those fronts and,
uh, became very shy and self-conscious for quite some time.
At the same time,
I'd started learning little bits here and there about feminism.
I'd heard this word, umm...
I heard all the stereotypes, didn't identify with it right away.
Then when I was 17 I found a book on my mother's bookshelf
and it was The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer and I read that book,
(laughs)
and that changed my life.
(laughs)
Quite simply one of those.
You know, I stopped shaving my legs, I stopped wearing makeup, I stopped, umm,
doing all the things that you would really have to do if you were going to pursue a career as an actress at that point in time and I'd also discovered that there is something called Feminist theatre...
Very elusive thing and that really excited me and I wanted to know what is this Feminist theatre?
Umm... Can I do it? What is it? And spent a lot of time searching for that and finding nothing. Like, nothing really written about it in Canada.
I found, uh, an American book called Feminist Theatre,
umm... Read that,
it just sort of named a lot of American plays, but it gave me an idea of what that was and then by,
I guess... Grade 12,
things started to come back together for me again.
One of our classmates had written a play, Eufemia Fantetti, called The Last Moon.
It was a two-hander and my friend Kevin Hammond was going to direct it and there were auditions of course, as there always are and he cast me, there -
It's a two-hander and he cast me in one of the lead roles. I think he took a lot of flack for that.
Uh... There was, you know, the top ten starlets who usually got cast in everything and no one could really understand why he cast Rebecca Burton in this play in this role,
but he knew me from before,
he had faith that I could do this role and,
uh... Very quickly,
it's, uh...
Two young women, teenagers, uh, in an institution. I played Stacey who has, uh, some mental health issues and she meets Myra who has been put here,
umm, for delinquent behaviour and the two of them form this unlikely friendship and bond...
And it was a huge challenge for me because as I said earlier, I had no confidence at that point in time, but Kevin worked with me a lot, our drama teacher did and,
uh, we presented this play, we did really well, we won, umm, our region, we went on to the city finals,
we went on to the provincial finals, uh, luckily and then we won that.
So... Yeah, I got an award for outstanding actor and all of this stuff and I -
I don't know if you'd call the play feminist, but it was certainly female, uh,
focused and it was sort of this great outlet for me and a revelation that OK,
(laughs)
I don't totally suck,
(laughs)
I can act and,
uh, I don't necessarily have to, uh, go the path that I've been told of wearing makeup and playing the young ingenue and stuff like that.
