An award-winning playwright, Tom Stoppard's body of work includes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tony Award), Jumpers, The Real Inspector Hound, After Magritte, Travesties (Tony Award), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Dirty Linen, The Real Thing (Tony Award), Artist Descending a Staircase, Hapgood, Arcadia (Olivier Award, New York Drama Critics' Circle Award), The Invention of Love, Indian Ink, Rough Crossing, Night and Day and his trilogy The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center (seven Tony Awards). Screenplays as writer and co-writer include Brazil, Empire of the Sun, Enigma and Shakespeare in Love (Golden Globe and Academy Awards). He directed his own screenplay of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Stoppard received a knighthood in 1997.
A number of Stoppard's plays have been produced by Canadian Stage; they are Rough Crossing (1993-1994) and three plays starring Fiona Reid including Indian Ink (2001-2002); Arcadia (1996-1997) and Night and Day (1981-1982, during the days of Toronto Free Theatre, garnering a Dora Award for Best Actor).
Director Donna Feore is a 17-year veteran of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival whose credits include directing Cyrano de Bergerac, Oklahoma!, Oliver!, Evangeline and choreographing A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Adventures of Pericles, My Fair Lady, The Threepenny Opera, The Three Musketeers, Pride and Prejudice and AlIce Through the Looking Glass. She recently directed The Canadian Stage Company's production of It's a Wonderful Life to critical and popular acclaim. Other credits include directing the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's production of Mozart: A Life in Letters and the musical Annie Get Your Gun at Massey Hall. She choreographed CBC TV's Triple Sensation, Getting Along Famously and Elizabeth Rex and the Canadian Opera Company's critically acclaimed Siegfried - part of Wagner's Ring cycle - and Oedipus Rex, which earned her a Dora Mavor Moore Award. Film and television choreography and directorial credits include the opera films Romeo and Juliette and Don Giovanni Unmasked; the television movies Eloise, Stormy Weather and Martin and Lewis; and the films Mean Girls and Beautiful Girl.
Fiona Reid's accolades include Dora Awards (11 nominations and two awards for Fallen Angels and Six Degrees of Separation) and a Gemini nomination (This is Wonderland). With numerous film, TV and theatre credits, audiences remember her best as the stressed mother of the groom in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and wife Cathy King to Al Waxman's King of Kensington on CBC Television for three seasons. She currently stars opposite Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in The Time Traveler's Wife. Her career is marked by a diversity of signature roles including Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire; Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest; Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Julia in Fallen Angels; Ouisa in Six Degrees Of Separation; Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd; and most recently Sister Aloysius in Doubt, a Parable. She has starred in many Canadian Stage productions including three Stoppard plays - Indian Ink, Arcadia and Night and Day - as well as The Clean House, Habeas Corpus, Omnium Gatherum, Sweeney Todd, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, How I Learned to Drive, A Delicate Balance, Fallen Angels, Hayfever, Six Degrees of Separation, Death and the Maiden and Lips Together, Teeth Apart. She is a Stratford Shakespeare Festival veteran (five seasons) recently appearing in the Festival's A Delicate Balance and The Music Man. She is also a Shaw Festival veteran (10 seasons). She will soon be appearing in Mrs. Dexter and her Daily (Arts Club Theatre/NAC) and Citadel Theatre's The Glass Menagerie. She is a recipient of the Order of Canada (2007).
Shaun Smyth is a Dora Award nominee (Trainspotting) and two-time Betty Mitchell Award nominee (Stones In His Pockets, The Chet Baker Project). He has starred in a number of Canadian Stage Company productions including The Pillowman, Of Mice and Men, Trainspotting and Closer. Citadel Theatre credits include Shining City and The Chet Baker Project. He recently starred as Judas in The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot (Toronto's BirdLand Theatre), Galileo in The Galileo Project (Tafelmusik), Laertes in Hamlet (Necessary Angel) and Ishmael in Moby Dick (Stratford Festival). Other stage credits include: Mad Boy Chronicle, A Guide To Mourning, The Collected Works Of Billy The Kid, Scary Stories, Crackpot (ATP); The Glass Menagerie (Grand Theatre); Blue/ Orange (Neptune Theatre); Sweeney Todd (Phoenix Theatre); Money & Friends (Vancouver Playhouse); and Macbeth, Country Wife, Amadeus (Stratford Shakespeare Festival). Smyth has appeared on television and on film; screen credits include Four Minutes, Three to Tango, Steal This Movie, Proteus, Kevin Hill, The Associates, Blue Murder, F/X, Lonesome Dove, Pit Pony and La Femme Nikita.
Kenneth Welsh has amassed an outstanding list of credits in feature films, television and on stage. He is a five-time Gemini Award-winner (Hiroshima, Deadly Betrayal: The Bruce Curtis Story, Love and Hate: The Colin and Joanne Thatcher Story, And Then You Die, Grand Larceny), a Genie Award-winner (Margaret's Museum), and a recipient of the Earle Grey Lifetime Achievement Award from ACTRA. He is best remembered for his portrayal of Windom Earle in the series Twin Peaks. His many film credits include George Romero's Duel of the Dead, Adoration, Four Brothers, The Aviator, Legends of the Fall, Perfectly Normal, The Freshman, Crocodile Dundee II, The House on Carroll Street and Loyalties, to name a few. He has performed in premieres on and off Broadway including Stoppard's The Real Thing as well as Whose Life Is It Anyway, Piaf, Treats, Ride a Cock Horse, Curse of the Starving Class, One Crack Out, Social Security, Virginia and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. He is the author of the cabaret musical Standup Shakespeare and a seven-year veteran of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He recently appeared in Soulpepper's Leaving Home, Under Milk Wood and Of the Fields Lately. He is a recipient of the Order of Canada (2004).
Joining Reid, Smyth and Welsh, the cast for Rock ‘n' Roll includes: Donald Carrier (nine seasons at Stratford including Assistant Director for Cyrano de Bergerac) playing the dual roles of Interrogator and Nigel; Sascha Cole (TeAmim Theatre's Ten Green Bottles and SeventhStage's Whale Music) in the roles of Gillian, Deirdre and Magda; Belinda Cornish (Theatre Calgary's Macbeth and core member of Canadian Comedy Award-winning live improvised soap opera DieNasty) as Lenka; Jacklyn Francis (Canadian Stage's Much Ado About Nothing and four seasons at Stratford) as Candida; John Kirkpatrick (Edmonton-based, award-winning actor/director and former Artistic Director of Edmonton's Freewill Shakespeare Festival, Canadian Stage's Of Mice and Men) plays the roles of Milan, Policeman and Jaroslav; Patrick Kwok-Choon (Canadian Stage's The Tempest) as Piper, Policeman, and Stephen; Cyrus Lane (Canadian Stage's Sweeney Todd, Amadeus, Take Me Out, Habeas Corpus) as Ferdinand; and Alex Paxton-Beesley (Company Theatre's Festen) as the younger Esme and Alice.
Feore has assembled an impressive creative team including set and costume designer Michael Gianfrancesco (Canadian Stage's It's a Wonderful Life, Little Shop of Horrors, The Rocky Horror Show and a seven-season Stratford veteran), lighting designer Kimberly Purtell (nominated for ten Dora Mavor Moore Awards winning one for Agokwe), sound designer Todd Charlton (four Dora nominations a 12-season Stratford veteran), projection coordinator Cameron Davis (Atom Egoyan's Adoration), stage manager Michael Sinclair (Canadian Stage and Citadel Theatre co-production Fire), assistant stage manager Nancy Yuen (Canadian Stage and Citadel Theatre co-production Fire), assistant director Mumbi Tindyebwa, dialet coach Jane Gooderham and dramaturge Suzanne Turnbull.
Upcoming in The Canadian Stage Company's 2009-2010 season is That Face by Polly Stenham, produced by Nightwood Theatre in co-production with Canadian Stage Company (Oct. 26 - Nov. 21 at Berkeley); 7 Stories by Morris Panych, in co-production with Theatre Calgary (Nov. 9 - Dec. 5 at Bluma); Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage, an Obsidian Theatre production (Feb. 8 - Mar. 6 at Bluma); The Overwhelming by J.T. Rogers, a Studio 180 Theatre production (Mar. 8 - Apr. 3 at Berkeley); ‘Art' by Yasmina Reza (Mar. 15 - Apr. 10), This is What Happens Next by Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks, a Necessary Angel production (April 12 - May 8 at Berkeley) and Catalyst Theatre's Frankenstein (April 29 - May 29 at Bluma).
The Canadian Stage Company is nationally and internationally acclaimed and Canada's leading not-for-profit contemporary theatre company. Founded in 1987 with the merger of CentreStage and Toronto Free Theatre, the Company is dedicated to programming international contemporary theatre and to developing and producing landmark Canadian works which have been awarded some of the country's most prestigious literary and performing arts honours, including the Governor General's, Chalmers and Dora Mavor Moore Awards. The Company presents the richest variety of Canadian and international plays and musicals - from edgy and provocative work at the Berkeley Street Theatre to productions with universal appeal at the Bluma Appel Theatre and a summer of Shakespeare at the TD Dream in High Park. Canadian Stage has a long-standing commitment to education and enhancement programs for the public, nurturing theatre professionals, and developing new Canadian plays, while producing thought-provoking theatre and high quality entertainment in Toronto, one of North America's largest theatre centres. For more information, refer to canstage.com.
