The well-known tale of master and apprentice is given a splash of colour with the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Warehouse season opener, RED.

Written by John Logan, best known for writing Gladiator, Hugo and the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, RED tells the story of Mark Rothko, the renowned abstract painter.

Mad Men fans may be familiar with Rothko thanks to Bert Cooper, who caused confusion and curiosity in the show’s second season when he had one of Rothko’s colour field paintings hanging in his office.

“So it’s smudgy squares, huh? That’s interesting,” shrugs Don Draper’s secretary, Jane.

“Maybe he has a brochure in here, something that explains it,” Harry Crane says.

RED is set in 1958 New York, and Rothko, played by Oliver Becker (The Seafarer, God of Carnage), is commissioned for his largest project yet: large-scale murals for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the new Seagram Building.

The play allows for a closer look into the creative process and frustration that this great artist went through throughout the duration of this commission.

B.C.-born actor Jameson Matthew Parker plays Ken, Rothko’s young, albeit fictional, apprentice. While Rothko did have an apprentice during the Seagram Commission, Logan has chosen to keep Ken fictional, Parker says.

“ We have a lot of fun up there too, though it may not look like it, because we’re always yelling at each other.

Jameson Matthew Parker, actor

“Ken is a young aspiring artist,” says Parker, 23. “So like any actor who would be playing Ken, he is at the beginning of his career, and just kind of trying to find his way in the world.”

Over the course of the two years that the play covers, Ken’s skills as an artist grow, while his understanding of art and the relationship he has with his master shift and change.

Being a young working professional himself, the recent University of British Columbia grad found many similarities between himself and Ken, making it easy to personalize the role.

“I actually worked for a year during school for a big film producer. I was his executive assistant,” Parker says. “He was very much like Rothko. Very hard, very demanding, very uncompromising, and he had a very odd temperament, much like Mark Rothko. So it was nice to be able to draw off of that.”

Parker could also draw from the nerves he felt upon first meeting his partner in painting, Becker.

Being a co-production with the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, the two would be spending a lot of time with each other, in two different provinces.

“I was like, ‘What if we don’t like each other? We have to spend the next three months together,’” Parker laughs.

He says the process has been interesting, having been only Becker, director Michael Shamata and himself in the room together. Their relationship has been sort of a parallel of Rothko and Ken’s, with Parker learning so much from Becker.

“I’ve learned so much about working at a professional level - it’s such a big role,” Parker says. “We have a lot of fun up there too, though it may not look like it, because we’re always yelling at each other.”

RED runs at the Tom Hendry Warehouse now until Saturday, Nov. 17. Tickets for RED start at $20 plus GST. For showtimes and ticket info visit www.mtc.mb.ca. Under 30? A limited number of $19 rush tickets are available beginning at noon on the day of performances. For more information, visit www.mtc.mb.ca/rush.

Published in Volume 67, Number 10 of The Uniter (November 7, 2012)