Actor Profile & BTS: Jennie Archambault as Kate Stockman – MESSENGER
We’re happy to have Archambault back ; she was last seen in 2023, starring in Mustard, directed by Margo Rodgers in our 50th season!
A little about Jennie Archambault:
My favourite characters over the years are ones that experience interesting emotional arcs. I learn something new from each one.
Archambault (right) discussing character blocking in an early rehearsal with the crew. (Top to bottom, actor David Mouti, SM April Hogarth, Director Andra Kelly, swing Joey Dillane)
An standout quote chosen as representative of her character:
“Thomas is many things but he is not a liar.
He is brave and fearless and that’s why I love him.”
I, like Kate, will put blind faith in the ones I love. Sometimes to my detriment.
I think she has more grace than I do. She has a great ability to make space for others to be who they are. That is not always easy.
And Archambault touches on this season’s theme of Untangling Love:
Kate is motivated by her bonds of love to her husband, children, and her brother-in-law. Her inner conflict comes from trying to balance them all.
Love does many things:
Love motivates, and gives. Love hurts, and regrets. Love waits, and frustrates.
Fear, likewise, does many things.
We often fear for what we love, out of the desire to protect it, to provide a better world for it.
Kate Stockman (Archambault) struggling to understand her husband, Thomas (Ted Powers).
Archambault plays Kate Stockman, whose husband turns himself inside-out and back again by his passion and love for the world and the people in it.
Kate has to witness the man she loves fall further away from their family in his effort to have any control in providing a safer future for all of them.
Thomas (Powers) facing off with his brother, Peter (David Mouti), leaving Kate (Archambault) to resolve yet another dispute.
Love doesn’t always look like love. In Thomas it often doesn’t. In Kate, it does. We watch her stand by, acquiescing to her role as yet another overlooked Parliamentary Spouse, all in support of the man she chose to build a life with.
However, Kate is more than a Spouse; in fact, she is a person with her own needs and wants.
Archambault grounds Kate as a woman we’ve all known; one who puts herself aside for the sake of others. Luckily, she does not let herself disappear between the cracks!
Jimmy (Derek Barber), Kate (Archambault), and Thomas (Powers) sharing some photo-album memories among old friends. (Also featuring SM Hogarth)