BY MATTHEW BEHRENS

The romantic leads in the Classic Theatre Festival’s second show of the summer season, the World War II romantic comedy The Voice of the Turtle, are both alumni of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. And while one would never know, given the electric onstage chemistry of Krista Leis and Michael Dufays, the two are only now working with each other for the first time.

Kitchener-born Leis, who plays Sally Middleton, a small-town girl finding romance in the big city, is a passionate performer who began movement lessons at age 5 and never looked back, declaring to her parents at age 11 that she wanted to be a dancer. With community theatre as an initial training ground, Leis jeteed out of high school and straight into the world-renowned Stratford Festival.

“They wanted young people for West Side Story, and while my heart was set on heading to L.A., my agent convinced me to stay,” she says.

“I never even thought of doing plays, I just wanted to kick my legs,” Leis says, relishing the opportunity to undertake mentoring and on-the-job training at Stratford, where most years she and others with her remarkable skill set can perform in both a musical and a play.

Leis has worked with The Voice of the Turtle director Lezlie Wade before on Stratford’s production of the epic Spanish work Fuente Ovejuna, where she understudied the lead female character. Leis was also in the 2008 productions of West Side Story and The Music Man.

“I love working at Stratford, it’s a very intense place with lots going on all the time, but it’s a very nurturing environment, especially when you get to work with veteran performers like Seana McKenna and James Blendick. They have great coaches, great mentors.”

Leis has also worked at Halifax’s Neptune Theatre, where she performed in Cats, Beauty and the Beast, and White Christmas.

Leis is impressed with The Voice of the Turtle playwright John Van Druten, noting, “There are not a lot of plays anymore that are sweet love stories. It’s so rare in a contemporary play when people kiss and fall in love. It’s also intriguing because the play looks at what women went through. They were granted certain freedoms but it was never clear which ones they could take. And as women we still ask ourselves the same questions about dating, relationships, and issues like promiscuity.”

When Turtle closes, Leis is headed to Toronto as a dance captain and “swing” in the musical comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which has been picked up by the legendary theatre impressarios, the Mirvishes. Leis will shadow six separate dancers and be prepared to go on in their place at a moment’s notice.

“It’s both an exciting and exhausting business, very intellectually stimulating, and I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Playing her onstage love interest is Michael Dufays, who came to Perth following his second year as assistant fight coordinator at Stratford, where swordplay in Shakespeare works is a common practice requiring the disciplined, skilled talents of people like Dufays, who grew up in Ottawa and graduated from Glebe Collegiate. Inspired by performing in a grade 12 play and a trip to New York City, he applied for and was accepted at the renowned American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and also trained with the legendary Group Theatre’s Sandy Meisner “whose approach to repetition exercises forces you to listen and respond, which are essential tools for actors.”

The physically buff Dufays, with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, says “I love sourcing drama from movement,”   which led him to work on Stratford productions of Dangerous Liaisons, King of Thieves, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar.

Dufays is also a member of the RIOT ACT, an “action creation team” that choreographs and designs fights, combat, and other forms of physical action often seen on stage and in movies. Three-quarters of their team are stage combat veterans along with martial arts experts, and their company has won numerous awards from the Action on Film Festival and Houston Film Fest.

In an age where special effects are often done digitally, Dufays notes there is a real truth in training someone to do remarkable stunts and balletic fight movements. “There’s always an interest in the human element and how the human body can perform,” he says, noting he admires the gifts of performer/choreographers like Jackie Chan.

Dufays, sparkling in his role as the sergeant Bill Page, loves The Voice of the Turtle. “It’s a great chance to dig into a complex aspect of humanity, which is how we fall in love and why. Affairs of the heart are so universal. That desire remains immortal and timeless despite the constraints people face. In the play we look at what it is to be alive, and how we can follow our hearts even if we normally resist those impulses.”

After Perth, it’s back on the road for Dufays in a Red Sky production called Raven Stole the Sun, which will tour to Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver Island.

The Voice of the Turtle runs through August 29, Wed.-Sat. at 8 pm, with Wed., Sat. & Sun matinees at 2 pm. Tickets are available at www.classictheatre.ca, by calling 1-877-283-1283 ext. 1, or in person at the Tickets Please outlet (inside Jo’s Clothes), located at 39 Foster Street in Perth.