When Jeremy Robinson is on stage he can be anyone he wants to be and travel anywhere he wants to go.
But, until this summer, the young actor, who lives in Sylvan Lake, had not travelled abroad and a dream he had harboured about visiting Paris remained simply that; a dream.
However, this summer that dream became a reality and the 31-year-old actor spent two weeks living in the City of Lights.
It was an amazing experience.
While visiting Paris, Robinson read the book, ‘A Movable Feast’, a set of memoirs by literary great Ernest Hemingway. The memoir consists of Hemingway’s personal accounts, observations and stories of his experience in 1920s Paris.
In the book, Hemingway describes the city as a movable feast that will never leave the person who has been lucky enough to have been there.
Robinson, as he walked down streets and laneways that, no doubt, Hemingway and other great writers and painters must have travelled, agreed.
“It was wonderful. I would go back in a second. Paris — it lives inside you.”
He recalled seeing the Mona Lisa painting housed at the Louvre behind bullet proof glass.
“I thought, wow, I’m actually in Paris looking at the Mona Lisa,” he said.
He especially enjoyed visiting the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, opened in 1951 by George Whitman.
The bookstore serves as both a regular bookstore and a reading library, specializing in English-language literature.
He said the Notre Dame Cathedral was the most beautiful building he had ever seen.
“It was the first thing I saw, and it was very cool,” he said.
Two weeks in Paris; drinking in its rich culture, exploring, watching, observing and being continually amazed by it all inspired Robinson to do some writing of his own.
“Sometimes I would be so inspired and I would just stop being a tourist and decide to sit and write. Right now I am working on a full length play; a family comedy/drama about a father and daughter. It is written from the daughter’s point of view.”
Now back home, Robinson has several pictures to remind him of his two weeks in Paris, but the best snapshots will, no doubt, remain imprinted in his mind forever.
“It truly is a movable feast just like Hemingway said,” he commented.
Robinson, who has lived in Sylvan Lake off and on for the last several years, graduated from Red Deer College with a degree in theatre arts and motion picture arts in 2008.
Since that time he has been a vital part of the theatre scene in Red Deer becoming a well known stage personality and well respected playwright.
He worked with Ignition Theatre acting and directing their Christmas show, It’s a Wonderful Life. He also wrote and performed in several other plays the group performed at Matchbox Theatre.
This spring he had the lead role in ‘The Psychic’, a Central Alberta Theatre production about a writer living in New York whose characters in the mystery novel he is writing come to life on stage.
Presently, Robinson is a performer and playwright for Against the Wall, another theatre group based in Red Deer.
The group performs Bullskit Comedy, a sketch comedy show with a flavour similar to Saturday Night Live.
Against the Wall will begin their sketch comedy shows at the Scott Block in Red Deer in September.
Against the Wall will also perform a murder mystery at La Casa Pergola Restaurant, Aug. 18.