For Toronto’s Scott Clarkson, starring in the Classic Theatre Festival’s production of The Fourposter, being an actor is a window to the world that explains things within and without the multi-talented performer’s life.

Playing half of a long-married couple in the comedic production, which runs August 5-28 at the wheelchair accessible, air conditioned Mason Theatre in Perth, Clarkson is a meticulous performer whose command of language and physical dexterity are reminiscent of the acting styles one sees in the classic movies he so admires. Indeed, audiences will note in The Fourposter that Clarkson’s very physical stage presence seems at times to channel characteristics associated with Cary Grant and Charlie Chaplin.

The Fourposter, written in the early 1940s and first staged in 1951, won a Tony Award for best play on Broadway, and is considered one of the best comedies about marriage written in the 20th century. Clarkson fell in love with the writing, which he found “concise and very real, almost as if it were written today. There’s something universal about relationships, and these things were as real in ancient Greece as they will be 500 years from now. There’s no false notes.”

Indeed, couples coming to the show may need to wear elbow pads for all the ribbing that is likely to take place when individuals recognize things about themselves taking place on stage, from the nervous wedding night and dealing with a drunk teenager at 4 am to issues of infidelity and empty nesting.

Clarkson says the theatre bug bit him early, playing the boy who did not believe in Christmas in a grade 2 play. Though he studied theatre at Concordia, he devoted much of his 20s to music, playing in a series of bands. Following a one-man show in the 2001 Montreal Fringe Festival, he wound up in New York City, first visiting the school that would become his new home on September 11, 2011.

“Funnily enough, being there that day didn’t scare me away. I just thought life is too short, I wasn’t enjoying my Montreal job, and so I moved,” taking up artistic residence at the HB Studio, (once owned by legendary actress Uta Hagen and her husband Herbert Berghof), a prestigious school whose alumni include Anne Bancroft, Matthew Broderick, Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, Al Pacino and Lily Tomlin.

Following over four years in New York, Clarkson set up shop in Toronto, landing work on his first day back in the lead role in Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, at the Tarragon Theatre. He moved on to an intensive three month project, Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men, which staged three pre-Shakespearean plays as they were produced 400 years earlier. Hence, an all male cast handled roles for both genders; actors would not receive a full script, only their own lines with a few lines before and after their parts, as was done in Renaissance theatre.

“In many ways it was a boot camp for classical theatre, everything from learning the way the plays were staged in their time to adapting to life as touring company, because the show went on the road as well,” he recalls.

Clarkson has also done some similarly intensive historical work at Toronto’s Fort York, where he and a group of actors performed for three hours a night, six nights a week, as soldiers during the War of 1812 over the expansive military barracks in Toronto’s west end. Audiences would follow the actors from scene to scene, set in different parts of the fort.

“I suppose there’s a lot of clichés about why actors do this work, but for me, it’s not about becoming someone else, or an escape into someone else,” Clarkson says. “It’s a chance to explore yourself as someone else. You bring yourself to a role through the framework a playwright gives you. That’s why you never see the same role played the same way by different actors.”

The Fourposter features a number of theme days throughout its run, including a post-show talkback on Sunday, August 14 after the 2 pm matinee that features Clarkson’s co-star Lindsay Kyte discussing meeting Paul McCartney earlier this month when she received her master’s degree in Liverpool. Both will also perform a set of Beatles tunes. Following the Saturday, August 20 matinee, the late playwright Jan de Hartog’s wife, Marjorie, arrives from Pennsylvania to discuss her husband’s life and legacy and their work for social justice.

Tickets are available at www.classictheatre.ca, by calling 1-877-283-1283, on in person at Tickets Please, 39 Foster Street (inside Jo’s Clothes). The show runs until August 28.