What's in a name?

For Mackenzie Muldoon, it led to an audition and roles at the Blyth Festival. Iris Winston reports.

Iris Winston, The Ottawa Citizen - Sunday, July 5, 1998

Mackenzie Muldoon adopted her stage name because her real one - Marcia Muldoon - was already 'taken' under actors' union rules.

Mackenzie Muldoon did not plan to change her name when she became a professional actor.

But Equity rules left her no option. No two members of the national stage performers' union may have the same moniker. So Marcia Muldoon, who grew up in Dunrobin, took the first name of Mackenzie (selected partly to honour her grandfather, Ken) after completing a degree in theatre arts at Concordia University this year.

However, it was her original name that helped her to land her first job.

"I had sent my resume all over," says the 22-year-old actor. "When I called Blyth (Festival) to follow up, the artistic director took the call because she thought it was the other Marcia Muldoon (a stage manager she knew)."

The artistic director of the Blyth Festival is Anne Chislett, the author of Quiet in the Land.

"We started talking and I told her that Quiet in the Land was one of the first plays that I ever did," says Muldoon. "In fact, it was the play that got me started in theatre. After I was in it, I did anything to get on stage."

She performed with Kanata Theatre, Orpheus Musical Theatre Society and Company of Musical Theatre and was a co-op student at GCTC through her high school years.

"I've always wanted to perform," she says. "Even when I was really little, I wanted to be a clown."

Later, her major interest became current Canadian drama -- the Blyth Festival's specialty. So it was that the phone call that she calls "a lucky fluke" led directly to the beginning of her professional stage career.

It was the connection that brought her the chance to audition for the 1998 Blyth season and led to the offer of roles in two of this summer's shows, Wilbur County Blues by Andrew Moodie and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs by Keith Roulston (who, with James Roy, current head of CBC radio drama, co-founded the Blyth Festival in 1975).

"I was really excited to get the audition and then to get the job," says Muldoon. "It's a dream come true for me."

And after her engagement at Blyth ends on Aug. 29, she is ready to go anywhere to keep the dream alive and be on stage.