The mask theory according to Brian Downey

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Brian Downey was a youngster when he first put on the mask.

Afflicted with a painful shyness, he found deliverance in the masquerade of make-believe, in an outlet that let him luxuriate in the attentions of others.

He discovered acting, a new way to cope with his own insecurities.

"If you feel inadequate about yourself, and you find when you put on this mask that people accept it, and you feel liked because of this new mask, well, hell, why not keep the mask on?"

Now one of Newfoundland's premier actors, Mr. Downey appeared in his first play, a school production, in his early teens.

"You weren't generally asked if you wanted to do something, you were told," he said in an interview with The Signal. "The (Christian) Brothers ruled with pretty much an iron hand and if you were told that you were going to play hockey, that was it, man, you played hockey, whether you hated it or not."

He was ordered to do just that -- with disastrous results. "I got a check and I went down and somebody skated into my face."

Better results were obtained when Mr. Downey was instructed to act in a play. He discovered that he could clown around and behave outrageously, but that people didn't think less of him because, after all, it wasn't him.

"That was a real revelation. Since that time I've realized the power that a person can have through -- I think the phrase sociologists use is 'image management.' You can present a face to the world that people will believe, and at the same time you can protect yourself."

While few people think of themselves as actors, Mr. Downey said everyone plays the role of at least one other character.

"Everybody acts, almost constantly. The sort of person you are with your business associates is not the same sort of person you are when you're with your children, your wife or your friends."

And some of society's best actors, he said, are politicians. Mr. Downey told of an encounter at a St. John's pub several years ago when then-politician Leo Barry approached him and said he had enjoyed many of Mr. Downey's performances.

"I said, 'Mr. Barry, I've enjoyed many of yours too.'"

When the masks that we chose to wear are more "rounded, or a little bit larger than other people's masks," that becomes acting, Mr. Downey said. "It goes beyond trying to fit in with the crowd... It's not just putting on a mask, it's more complete than that. You have a whole different history for yourself, a whole different physical persona. It's taking the management that you do with your everyday life a few extra steps and making it refined and complete."

Gordon Jones, an English professor at Memorial University and theatre critic for CBC Radio, describes Mr. Downey as a "very powerful" actor.

"I think I've said on occasion that he is arguably the best actor in Newfoundland... He never turns in slipshod performances; (he's) always very strong and professional.

"He's got intelligence and he's got wit... A good actor finds much more in a script than is there on the page. The art of acting you might say is discovering the full range, the full depth of the subtext of the play. The text itself simply lies there on the page until an actor articulates it and makes it alive and vibrant. And Downey makes it vibrate better than most."

Ed Martin, the artistic director with the Elysian Theatre Group, first worked with Mr. Downey in 1985 on the show True West. Since then, Mr. Downey has been featured in 10 Elysian shows.

"Downey's got something that you can't teach, and you can't learn," Mr. Martin said. "You either have it or you don't. He's got charisma. That's why people like him so much. You can't take your eyes off him when he's on the stage."

Mr. Martin said there are theatregoers in St. John's who will attend a play solely because Mr. Downey is in the cast. "I have to be honest with you -- I look for vehicles I can put Brian in, and we're looking at a couple of vehicles for him now. There was one critic who told me I should sign him up for the season -- and last year I practically did.

"And it's not one of these situations where you get tired of seeing him, because he's always a different person -- he takes on a character and he loses himself in it."

Mr. Downey was born and raised in St. John's and attended St. Bon's -- he was in the last high school class to graduate before it switched to elementary -- and was a studious, quiet lad. "When the other guys were trying to get copies of For Men Only and Playboy, I was reading about nuclear physics."

On graduation, Mr. Downey said he bought the line that "the greatest thing to aspire to is a high-powered, high-profile white collar job." He landed a "respectable" job as a chief clerk at a bank.

"And it drove me nuts. I just couldn't stand the particular kind of pressures that holding down that kind of job entailed. I didn't like the attitudes in the people I saw around me -- so I quit."

After trying about a dozen other pursuits, Mr. Downey settled on music, playing guitar and bass with a succession of local groups, among them The East End Bues Band. Mr. Downey broke into theatre when the band wrote Some Slick, a musical-comedy that cast a cynical eye on Newfoundland's obsession with offshore oil. That show was a hit, and was the progenitor of his next band, Iceberg Alley. They were asked to write a musical-comedy for Rising Tide Theatre -- I Was a Teenage Love Doll was the result -- and that too was a hit. Not long after, Mr. Downey punged into full-time acting.

"I guess I rediscovered that I had a capacity to entertain and, hell, people pay for it. That to me was a satisfactory life to lead. It made me feel that I was doing something worthwhile, I could support myself, and I could hold and espouse principles that I would not have been able to hold in the business world."

Since then, Mr. Downey has taken roles in a host of film projects, including The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood, A Switch in Time (filmed in Argentina with a Canadian company), and most recently George's Island, a contemporary pirate adventure from Salter Street Films, produced in Nova Scotia. For television, he has appeared in Danger Bay, The Beachcombers, Yams From Pigeon Inlet, Up At Ours, and John and The Missus. He could doutless hook into other jobs if he moved away from Newfoundland, but Mr. Downey refused to do so.

"I believe there will come a time when actors from different parts of the country will travel... there will be easy access. If you're right for a role and a diector likes you ... there's no reason why you shouldn't take that role, whether it's in Kelowna, B.C., Timmins, Ontario, or a wonderful French role in Sault Ste. Marie."

"Brian Downey could make it anywhere as an actor," said Mr. Martin. "He's one of the people who, like I, believe that you don't have to go away to be successful -- you can be successful right here."

Interestingly, Mr. Downey has no time for the star system: "I don't believe that one person should be granted more favors for the work they do than other people... People that allow their egos to influence their work habits make serious mistakes and eventually fall by the wayside -- unless they've got a really good agent!"

Mr. Downey has two simple, if ambiguous, pieces of advice for young people contemplating a career in acting. He said they should not be afraid to get training. But he added, if someone is inclined to jump in and learn by doing, that's fine too.

"There's no amount of training that can ever replace time on a stage; time in front of a real paying audience, an audience that says to you, 'OK, kid, let's see what you've got.'"