Meet Cameron Grant

After making his Bard debut as an Apprentice Director on Harlem Duet in 2022, Cameron Grant is back this time as an actor to take on the roles of two of this Season’s young lovers. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, he plays Fenton, the charismatic Windsor Stags soccer star beloved by everyone at the Windsor Park Recreation Centre—everyone except Mr. and Mrs. Page, of course. In Antigone, Cameron plays Haimon, a sensitive young man whose unwavering commitment to Antigone leads to tragedy.

Earlier this summer, we had the chance to chat with Cameron about his start in theatre and how he traded the soccer field for the stage, what it’s been like to return to Bard this summer, and how a desire to tell stories he wasn’t seeing on stage led to him pursuing directing and writing.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into theatre?
I played soccer competitively growing up, so that really took up most of my childhood. In Grade 8, an arts high school came and did a presentation about auditioning and considering an arts focused high school education, and I was like, “Yeah, I want to audition for the theatre program with no experience or any kind of training.” Somehow, I got in, and I started really falling in love with theatre. Midway through high school, I realized that soccer was taking too much of my time, so I stepped away to focus on theatre, and that was my start.

I was going to ask if you played soccer as well, given your role as Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor. What’s it been like to bring these two parts of your life together in this way?
It’s been very cool. Even when I stopped playing soccer, my siblings still played and I refereed and coached. So soccer’s always been part of my life, but I’ve never really had the opportunity to merge it with this other huge part of my life, which is theatre. It’s been really fun to bring some of the soccer skills that I had into this play. Before the Season, I was getting out there on the soccer pitch and just brushing up on my skills and I realized, “Hey, I’ve still got some moves!”

What has it been like it for you as a soccer fan to be in Vancouver for the World Cup and to be in this production that really is a celebration of the sport?
It was so fun to have the World Cup here, and to see Canada do so well was really exciting. When I heard about the conceit of The Merry Wives of Windsor, it made complete sense. A recreation centre is a place where communities can come together and where people from all different walks of life can converge, and that has always been my experience playing soccer. We’re all on the same team because we all love this game. To merge that with theatre, which is also kind of like being on a team and being part of a community, has been really fun.

Can you tell us a bit more about Fenton and what it’s been like to not only dive into a role like that, but to build this relationship between him and Anne Page with Rachel Angco?
The tricky thing about The Merry Wives of Windsor is that Fenton and Anne are the central young lovers, but they’re not really in much of the play. Between me, Rachel, and Rebecca [Northan], we wanted to make it clear that this was a relationship that wants to move forward and that audiences could be invested in. Rachel is also so much fun: we’re both a little silly, so we’ve embraced just jumping into this innocent and light young love. At the same time, they’re ready to take charge of their lives in a way that Mr. and Mrs. Page maybe aren’t ready for, so it’s been fun to find a path for them. By the end, the audience is really on our side, and everyone is so excited when we come out and show our rings.

Cameron Grant as Fenton and Rachel Angco as Anne Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor (2026) |  Photo by Emily Cooper.

One of my favourite ongoing bits in the show is the way Ms. Quickly says “MIS-TER FEN-TON.” How did that come about?
The one thing that Rebecca said early on was that if you interact with Fenton, you love him, so that just opened up the door for people to elevate him a little bit. For Steffanie [Davis], who plays Ms. Quickly, she found this really endearing way to lift him up with that “Mr. Fenton.” It’s also helpful because it really gets people on our side, especially because he’s not always there, so it reminds us that these people in the community centre love him, so the audience comes to be endeared with him as well.

Cameron Grant as Fenton and Steffanie Davis as Ms. Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor (2026) | Photo by Emily Cooper

Now, to pivot to Antigone, you play Haimon, which is a very different role compared to Fenton. What’s it been like to balance these two productions?
With Haimon, there are similarities to Fenton and his youthfulness and innocence, and he’s also at a point where he’s ready to take control of his life, but there are outside factors that get in the way of that. The world is so different too: we’re all on stage the whole time and we really work together as an ensemble to tell the clearest story possible. It’s a fun challenge to keep both productions alive, and it’s also an exciting reprieve. The Merry Wives of Windsor is so fun and silly and ridiculous, and Antigone is quite heavy at times, so it’s been nice to be able to go back and forth between worlds.

Cameron Grant as Haimon in Antigone (2026) | Photo by Emily Cooper

Haimon has this very moving relationship with his father, Creon. What was it like to discover this dynamic with Paul Moniz de Sá?
Working with Paul is so wonderful, because we both really respect each other’s work. We were happy to make offers and really collaborate on those scenes. The thing that we found is that these two characters really love each other as father and son, but they don’t love each other in the ways that each of them want. Their love misses each other without them knowing it. Even now, we’re still finding new discoveries and investing in trying to reach each other, even knowing that they’re going to end up on different sides. That they keep trying leads to some really quite heartbreaking moments.

Cameron Grant as Haimon in Antigone (2026) | Photo by Emily Cooper.

This is your first Season as an actor, but you do have experience in our Douglas Campbell Theatre already! You were our Apprentice Director for Harlem Duet back in 2022. How does it feel to be back at Bard as a performer?
That was also my first time in Vancouver, and it was such an exciting Company to be a part of. I studied Harlem Duet in school, and as a Black theatre artist, you know Djanet Sears’ body of work. I’ve read all of her plays, but they’re not often produced, so having the opportunity to not just see it, but to also be a part of crafting it, was really exciting, as was working with director Cherissa Richards, who’s a collaborator and friend of mine. Harlem Duet was the last major project that I worked on as an assistant director, and it really launched my career into directing. I never thought I would come back—not because I didn’t enjoy the experience but because I never thought I’d move to Vancouver—and it’s been wonderful to reconnect with the friends that I made at Bard and to have the opportunity to experience the full Season in repertory. It’s unlike any other place that I’ve ever worked, and it’s been great to be part of this storied and fun and wonderful company.

You kind of touched on your work as a director, but could you tell us more about what drew you to directing and that side of your artistry?
The first five years of my career, I was really focused on acting. I spent four years at the Shaw Festival, but I started to feel like there were ways of telling stories that I wasn’t having the opportunity to investigate because I was focusing on being an actor. When I moved on from that company, I started to let other art creative impulses in, and one of the biggest influences was Nina Lee Aquino. She reached out to me about assisting her on a radio play and put the seed in my head that I could be a director. I really loved how I could shape the story and started to realize that I had something to offer there. I kept trying to find other opportunities to learn from directors, and I’ve discovered that I really like being on that side of the table because it’s just another way to enter the story.

In addition to that, you’re also a writer! You have a play that’s touring virtually with Carousel Players called Meet Chloe, as well as a play called Inheritance that was in development with Obsidian Theatre. Can you tell us more about your writing practice?
Writing came out of a lot of the same creative impulses as directing. I was in these classical and period plays that I felt like I was inserting myself into. People were making space for me to do so, but I still felt that they weren’t really my stories. I started to think about what stories I’d like to tell if I had the choice. My first play, Meet Chloe, came out of a moment in history. I came across the story of Chloe Cooley, who was enslaved in Upper Canada—in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where I was living and working at the Shaw Festival—but I was learning about her and her resistance for the first time in my 20s, which both amazed and enraged me. I thought about what I could do as an artist to tell her story in a responsible way. I landed on a theatre for young audiences show about a group of kids that decide to do a research project on her, but the challenge they come across is that there’s not a lot of information on her. She has this huge impact on Canadian history, but then she disappears into the slave system, so the play investigates the question of whose stories get to be told, especially when these histories aren’t written down. The play that I’m working on now, Inheritance, is about a Black family grappling with today’s housing crisis and the idea of financial, spiritual, and familial inheritances when our elders die. It’s also kind of funny and ridiculous.

Are there any artists that you’ve been inspired by lately?
I’m listening to a lot of Julius Eastman. He’s a contemporary classical musician who died in the 90s, and his work has been having a resurgence over the past 10 years. There’s something sort of beautiful, melodic, and kind of erratic about his music. I’ve been really drawn to his music for Antigone, so I’ve been listening to it in rehearsals and when I’m making my way to the theatre before shows. There are also so many excellent theatre artists that I’ve had the chance to watch and connect with over the last ten years, like Tom McCamus, Lisa Berry, and Marci T. House. We have such a rich theatre landscape here in Canada, and as a young actor, it’s so exciting to sit on the side and watch these veterans just kill it.

Finally, when you’re not performing at Bard, how do you like to spend your time?
I love to read every morning with coffee. I like to cook, so that’s another nice creative outlet. I also live right by Wreck Beach, so now that the summer is hot and it’s beautiful weather, I try to get to the beach at least once a week. I just sit there, read my book, and look at the water. I don’t really swim, but I dip my toes in.

Are there any books that you’ve been really loving recently?
Right now I’m reading Parable of the Talents, which is a sequel to Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. It’s this amazing dystopian, sci-fi story about climate change and the apocalypse. It’s set today, but it was written in the ‘90s, and it’s so relevant to everything happening right now. It’s not necessarily a light read, but it’s a beautiful piece of writing.

Thanks so much for chatting with us, Cameron!

Our 2026 Season closes on September 19, so don’t miss out on your chance to see him in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Antigone this summer. Tickets start at $30!