Island actress Susan Hogan was honoured with the Lorena Gale Woman of Distinction Award last weekend.
The award, named for Canadian actress and playwright Lorena Gale, was created by the Union of BC Performers (UBCP) following her passing in 2009. Each year it recognizes a woman in the performing arts who has worked to advance women’s issues both on-stage and in their personal lives.
For Susan Hogan, whose acting resume is a sit-down read of its own, this has been a priority since she began her career decades ago.
“When I first started working in film, being on set I would look out at the crew and you wouldn’t see a single woman anywhere. It was just a sea of men,” recalls Hogan. “Directors, grips, camera operators, directors of photography, anything. You wouldn’t see a woman in those positions.”
Diversity and gender equality were causes Susan took up, and continues to fight for to this day. This often consists of pointing out disparities on-set, with the acting industry at-large, or even with source material itself. There is much work still to do, but she points out how far things have come since she started. “Just look at us now,” she said during her acceptance speech on Saturday, earning a standing ovation from the crowd packed into Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom.
One of her favourite memories of challenging establishment norms was during a production of Taming of the Shrew (spoilers ahead) in Toronto. The William Shakespeare play concludes with the male lead, Petruchio, successfully convincing – through nefarious means – his wife Katherina to extol the virtues of being subservient to men. “You can see why I had trouble with that,” says Hogan.
So, along with her husband and fellow actor Michael, they flipped the script and had Petruchio deliver the final speech about the joys of being tamed. Susan says the resulting audience conversations about topics such as sexism and the patriarchy made her feel that the switch had a positive impact regarding these issues.
Even with her decades of work, Hogan was still in shock when she received the email with the news in the fall. “I kept going back to my laptop and reading it again, walking around the room again, then going back and reading it again. I walked around my living room about 100 times,” she says.
But, via confirmation with a call to UBCP the next day, Susan found out it was indeed real. “I couldn’t grasp it, the size of what this felt like to me. To even be considered for something like this, I’m just so honoured and so grateful,” she said.
Susan chose Anne Wheeler, an award-winning B.C. director she’s worked on past projects with, to give her introduction speech. Wheeler actually had a trip planned to Mexico during Nov. 25, but delayed her travels to be there for Susan’s big moment.
Then it was up to Hogan to write a speech of her own. Susan says she finds it hard to talk about herself, especially to a large crowd, but over the course of a few weeks she found a shape for her talk, including stories about her acting history, her focus on gender equality, and her family too. Finally the speech was finished – but while previewing it UBCP said it would run too far over the allotted five minutes.
Her son Gabriel, along with her good friend who had flown in from the Maritimes, each had the same advice for her: “Don’t change a single thing.” They explained that you can’t fit a lifetime of achievement into five minutes. So Susan went for 10 on award night, and did not find herself played off the stage before she’d completed it all.
Hogan says it was a night she’ll never forget, made perfect by the fact her entire family – husband Michael, and children Gabriel, Jennie, and Charlie – were all able to be in attendance, along with many friends.
“It was a pretty extraordinary night, like no other,” says Susan.
