Soulpepper’s tarnished legacy

High Drama

I first saw Albert Schultz perform in the summer of 1987, when I was in middle school. My grandmother had taken me to a matinée of Romeo and Juliet staged by Stratford’s Young Company, a group of talented emerging actors. Schultz was in his early 20s and played an impassioned, convincing Romeo. Even back then, I knew something special was happening in that performance. Shakespeare, in the wrong hands, can sound alien and pretentious, but the actors spoke their lines with simplicity and clarity.

Though Schultz wasn’t yet famous, somehow I was starstruck. He charmed me that afternoon, as he charmed so many people, onstage and off, in the years that followed. His personality was magnetic and confident. Socially, he was as lively and compelling as he was in the theatre. He made everyone around him feel special and important. Over the years, I’d see him at some of the city’s glitziest social events, enthusiastically back-slapping and airkissing his way around the room.

Soulpepper, the theatre company he founded in 1998 with his wife at the time, Susan Coyne, and several other actors, was immediately embraced and lauded by the city. And with good reason: it consistently put on smart, sophisticated shows that breathed freshness and vitality into complicated literary classics. And while many actors and directors contributed to Soulpepper’s success, the company was propelled forward largely by Schultz’s energy and ego. He was its artistic director, chief fundraiser, frequent headliner and most evangelical promoter.

The strength of his personality was so dominant, his charisma so effective and his success—particularly in the fiscally challenged world of theatre—so dazzling that his authority was rarely questioned. That is, until last January, when four former Soulpepper performers filed civil lawsuits alleging that they experienced unwanted groping, harassment and sexual remarks from Schultz. He vowed to defend himself vehemently, then quickly resigned, and so did the executive director, Leslie Lester, his second wife.

There was some excellent reporting on the case when the four actors went public with their accusations—in the Globe and Mail and on the CBC, in particular. And I watched every second of the accusers’ live-streamed press conference. But I never fully understood what happened or how. What led to the dramatic accusations? And why did they come out now? We asked Leah McLaren to find out.

Over the last several years, Leah has written some fantastic, deeply reported features for Toronto Life. She approaches each subject with neither fear nor favour, just an intense curiosity about how people behave and why. The results speak for themselves. Her most recent story for the magazine was about the suicide of the Toronto Star reporter Raveena Aulakh, who had been having an affair with a married senior staffer at the paper. And before that, Leah wrote a cover story about the aftermath of the Jian Ghomeshi scandal. Her piece in this issue about Schultz (“Downfall,” page 66) is the most comprehensive, authoritative and revealing account of the saga you’ll read—full of telling details and behind-the-scenes information.

It’s a sad, sordid story, a very big mess, with lots of pain and no winners—the kind of drama, in other words, that no theatre company ever wants.

—Sarah Fulford Email: editor@torontolife.com Twitter: @sarah_fulford

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