Warning: Contains mild spoilers for Season 2 of Riverdale.
Riverdale fans who’ve been intrigued by the surprisingly nuanced character of Moose Mason will want to snap up a ticket to Red Light Winter on Granville Island – but only if they’re allowed to watch R-rated fare.
Actor Cody Kearsley – who portrays the bi-curious jock Moose on The CW’s hit series about Archie Andrews and his eclectic group of pals and foes – launches his new theatre company, Vagrant Players, this month with a week-long run of Red Light Winter, the searing drama from American playwright Adam Rapp that was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006.
“This show is rated R, and we’ve been warning people not to bring kids to it,” says the Okanagan-raised, Vancouver-based actor and theatre artist in a recent phone interview. The R-rating is printed on the show’s tickets: for coarse language, nudity, sexuality and violence – none of which is “gratuitous, but it’s absolutely needed for the story,” notes Kearsley. “There’s absolutely meaning behind it.”
Red Light Winter follows two college buddies (portrayed by Kearsley and Albert Nicholas) who take off to the Netherlands and are pulled into a bizarre and tortured love triangle with a Dutch sex worker (Alexandra Voicu).
Riverdale is dark, but Red Light Winter is (in the parlance of season one Veronica Lodge) full dark, no stars. Kearsley describes Red Light Winter as prototypical Adam Rapp: “It’s very raw and very visceral and it’s very in your face. He doesn’t let the audience off the hook at all. It’s funny, but it’s also brutal. It’s as dark as it is funny and it’s as beautiful as it is tragic. It’s all-encompassing theatre.”
Red Light Winter is the inaugural production for Vagrant Players, which Kearsley says will provide a safe haven for emerging artists and actors who crave risk-taking theatre and diverse voices, but might feel rootless in the Vancouver theatre scene. It’s why he chose the name Vagrant Players in the first place.
“Vagrant is another name for outcasts, and I feel like, as artists, we don’t really belong in society a lot of times, and when we’re not filming, we’re sitting around picking up odd jobs and figuring out where our next meal is coming from,” Kearsley says. “I really wanted this to be an artistic shelter for artists to come and create art together and allow the community to be there with us to support and listen to these stories.”
Just because Kearsley is making inroads into Vancouver’s theatre scene doesn’t mean that he’s leaving Riverdale (“I love being on set, and I’m looking to expand my career in that,” he says, adding that when he read a recent Riverdale script in which (spoiler alert for fans who haven’t seen it) Moose was shot by the Black Hood, he assumed he’d been killed off) – but it does mean that he’s determined to make theatre – his first love – an even bigger part of his life.
“My biggest passion right now is to help build the theatre industry here,” says Kearsley. “The experience you get on stage is unlike anything else.”
As for the audience’s experience of Red Light Winter, Kearsley says ticket buyers are in for an emotional gut-punch. “I want the audience to fall in love and be heartbroken.”
He laughs. “That sounds a bit sadistic. I don’t want them to feel heartbroken, but that’s probably how they’re going to feel. I’m sure they’ll be reminded of experiences in their own life, and they’ll come out better for it.”
• Red Light Winter is directed by Nadine Wright and runs Nov. 18 to 26 at the Revue Stage (1601 Johnson St.) on Granville Island. Tickets $20.
