Meet the cast of The Sweet Delilah Swim Club | Jane Miller at Jeri Neal

Making her Lighthouse debut, Jane Miller has a great deal of experience on Canadian stages. She’s appeared as Baruska in Once (Grand Theatre/RoyalMTC), These are the Songs that I Sing When I’m Sad (Solo performance, Boca del Lupo, Blyth Festival, ArtSpring), as Lucy in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown (YPT), and in Shaking the Foundations (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre), to name just a few. We chatted with Jane about what she loves about her character, how she see’s the role of theatre in today’s society, and how she builds chemistry with her fellow castmates.

Jane Miller as Jeri Neal in The Sweet Delilah Swim Club

Lighthouse Festival (LF): What will the audience be thinking about in the car as they drive home after this show? 

Jane Miller (JM): Audiences will be driving home thinking about friendship; the friendships in their lives that meant the most to them, the people who were with them through tough times, and the people who made them laugh the hardest of anyone they’ve known. Deep, life-long friendships.

(LF): What do you love about the character you’re playing?

(JM): What I love about my character, Jeri Neal, is the chance to really lean into my heart with her. She lets me really indulge in what it might be like to be, as they refer to her, the least judgemental person they know. It’s a beautiful way to see the world & I get to explore that perspective.

(LF): How do you build chemistry with your fellow cast members? 

(JM): When you use the word “chemistry”, I hear “trust”, and that is crucial for any cast and team when putting up a show. While I’ve previously worked with a few people on this show, I’ve never worked with this exact group and we may never again. So with only so much time to find out who we are to each other in the world of the play, trusting each other is how we get there, to the final product that audiences ultimately witness. The challenge is that It has to happen almost immediately. And I think the way we do that, as actors, is to listen deeply, intently, to what the other actor is giving you, offering you, through their delivery. When you can see and feel that your castmates are each listening and responding anew every time you run through a scene, then you know you can trust each other to be present and make this world feel as real as possible together. And as soon as everyone walked in the room on Day One, that listening was there and so that trust, that chemistry, was deep from the very beginning.

(LF): How do you see the role of theatre in today’s society?

(JM): There’s so much story available to us in so many forms these days. Short, long, online, in the palms of our hands. But I think what theatre offers that sets it apart is a truly communal experience. Movies sort of do it, in that the audience is in a room together, but in the theatre the actors are too and we’re all going through this story together in real time. How the audience responds affects our performance and they can hear each other too. We’re breathing the same air. Just spending this time together with our attention and focus.reminds us all of our shared humanity. That can be a rare thing these days.

(LF): What’s the best piece of acting advice you’ve ever received?

(JM): When I was a very young, just-starting-out actor, I was in a summer stock production and it was during previews so we were still working things out a bit. At the curtain call, the bows basically, I was feeling like I hadn’t done good work so I was already intensely analysing my performance. Which meant I was also frowning intensely, while we were bowing, clearly quite unhappy. The director found me in the dressing room afterwards and admonished me. He said, “Don’t you ever frown like that in a curtain call! Doing that, you’re telling the audience they’re wrong for applauding, for offering their thanks. You smile and accept that applause with grace! That’s also part of your job. Then you get off-stage, go back to the dressing room and do whatever it was you were doing up there! Never let me see you do that again!” It taught me that the audience’s experience IS the point of doing this work. From beginning to the very end of the performance.