Searching for a northern star

MIRIAM HILL

Maggie Qillaq ties her hair back and puts on her coat. She has just finished an audition for the female lead role in the movie version of Farley Mowat’s The Snow Walker.

She speaks animatedly about the audition — in stark contrast to moments ago when the camera was rolling and she was speaking in broken English, pretending to be the withdrawn, shy Inuit woman the script requires. “I was pretty shy,” she says.

The 25-year-old was working at a bar in Iqaluit when one of the bouncers approached her and told her there was a man who wanted to speak with her.

“He just introduced himself and asked my name,” she says. Then he asked if she wanted to audition for a role in a movie. “I just smiled and said, ‘What?’ Then we started talking.”

Jared Valentine, the casting director with the Vancouver-based agency, Valentine Casting, is looking for a beautiful young Inuit woman to play the role of Konala in the film. The shooting location hasn’t been determined yet, but production is expected to start this year sometime between July and October.

“What’s with the green light?” Qillaq asks Valentine, gesturing to a waist-high free-standing light covered with a green filter.

“It’s just a diffuser,” he explains, “so you won’t have shadows cast on your face.”

Valentine has been in Iqaluit for about two days looking to make someone a star. He and his casting assistant Jolene Arreak have been scouting coffee shops, restaurants and bars, as well as the high school and college, looking for the woman who will play the female lead role opposite Barry Pepper, a Canadian actor who has been in films such as Saving Private Ryan and Battlefield Earth.

“This is one of the most challenging castings I’ve done,” Valentine says, “because it’s so specific and for one character.” Minor characters will be cast from the area where the film is shot.

Twenty-one-year-old Linda Kownark walks into the darkened room for her audition. She brings a friend along for support. Kownark wears a white T-shirt and jeans and has her long, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Valentine asks her to let her hair down.

She’s directed to sit cross-legged on a large rectangular box near a corner of the room. Overhead lights shine down on the set and a man with a small video camera trains his lens on Kownark. Valentine sits on a chair in front of her.

“Just relax,” he tells her before asking some general questions about her background. Then he asks her to read lines of dialogue from a script, while he reads the part Pepper will play.

The story is about a cocky bush pilot who crashes in the Arctic and is saved by a demure Inuit woman who helps him survive and dispel his prejudices.

The script requires Kownark to speak in broken, halting English, but she’s not quite sure what this means. Her friend suggests she try to speak like her father.

They run through the dialogue with some problems then Valentine asks her to stand with him in front of the camera to get an idea of her height. He goes to check who will read next, but comes back in and asks Kownark if she will try it again.

This time he explains the story in greater detail. He encourages her to speak more slowly and no worry so much about the words on the page, or about the spots where she’s required to translate words into Inuktitut.

“We’re all white people back in Vancouver who have no idea what you’re saying,” he says. “We want to see your eyes and your face…. Don’t worry so much about the words.”

They do the dialogue again, and Kownark appears much more relaxed and in character.

“I’ve never done anything like that before,” she giggles after Valentine says cut. “I was a little nervous but I’m better now.”

The hardest part of the audition, she says emphatically was pretending she doesn’t speak fluent English. “Most of it was easy, but that … that was weird,” she says shaking her head.

Once the auditions are complete, the women speak with casting assistant Arreak, who makes sure all their personal information has been recorded. Each potential actress has a “profile” recording her height, weight and contact information along with a Polaroid snapshot.

Arreak says she can tell how nervous the women are and she tries to calm their worries. “Sometimes they chicken out,” she says. “And I convince them to come back by telling them it’ll be fun, a good experience.”

The reluctance is something Valentine isn’t used to.

“In Vancouver and Toronto people really want a part,” he says. “Here they don’t necessarily care.”