(Carlo, these items below should all go under “Director”.

cUntil my mid-teens I assumed I would follow my father into the Canadian Army. Then I started reading books on the history of ancient Babylonia, Egypt and Ur and the exploits of Heinrich Schliemann. I enrolled at McGill (1965) thinking/dreaming I would end up as the first Western Archeologist to get permission to dig in China. But my McGill professors were so bored with what they were teaching, their boredom infected me. I took what today would be called a “gap year”, hitched around Europe and ended up in Freiburg, southern Germany, studying German literature. Not knowing a soul, I plucked up my courage and auditioned in German for the student theatre group. I had barely seen any theatre, (was there any in Canada at the time?), never done any theatre, never even had any interest in theatre… theatre was for “sissies” as far as I was concerned. I was merely, so I thought, auditioning to meet some fellow students. (Yes, girls too.) Imagine my surprise to be cast in the annual university production, a play by Fernando Arrabal, cutting edge (for its time) “Theatre of the Absurd”. After a moderately successful run in Freiburg, we were chosen as the West German representative for the 1967 international student drama festival in Zagreb in (then) Yugoslavia. The plays/productions I saw at that festival, performed by university drama groups from all across Europe, were astonishing… I had no idea theatre could be so enthralling. The Sorbonne University’s adaptation of Rabelais, still runs through my head today, over 50 years later, fresh as this morning’s coffee. Internal creative overtones had been set resonating. I returned home to Montreal and the tail end of Expo ‘67 needing to explore theatre further.

My Life In Theatre spans five chapters.

(Carlo: Drop-down menu with the five chapters, each with an image as button)

1) McGill Days (Image could be the poster for 3Penny Opera)

McGill Student Days

1967-1970

I came home from Freiburg to McGill, the theatre bug coursing through my veins, switched to languages and started participating in McGill Players’ productions in the student union. It was a deep dive, playing, experimenting, learning my craft in Sandwich Theatre, as it was called at the time. We had plays on at lunch time during the school year, and fellow students could drop by with their sandwiches and watch the show. Learning by doing. At the end of that year, to my surprise, I was elected President of the McGill Players' Club. Without asking, without any forewarning, the outgoing President, Ginette Kuchinsky (sp?), whom I barely knew, nominated me. I was too shy, too scared even, to turn the nomination down. Imagine my surprise when the members elected me as the incoming President for the next school year.

Well, if I was going to run the student theatre, I figured I better know a bit more about how theatre works. With the help of Janet Amos, who had been starring in some of our student productions, and who was to become a fantastic, highly respected actor on the T.O. scene, I got a summer job as an Acting ASM at the Red Barn Theatre in Jackson’s Point Ontario. Peter Boretski and Jennifer Phipps were the Artistic Directors. We rehearsed and staged a new play every week for the entire summer. An Everest of a learning curve. I ended up knowing how to build flats, hang lights and to be able to tell the difference between a Leko and a Fresnel. Something the current Tech graduates from the National Theatre School of Canada, I can attest first-hand, are incapable of. I even ended up playing the Villain in the melodramatic pot boiler, Murder In The Red Barn. (Type casting?) Back to McGill at the end of the summer. That 1968-69 school year was a bursting Pinnate crazy year of productions. I was part of a cohort of theatre nuts that overdosed on plays to the detriment of our studies. Directing, acting, crewing, lighting… we had to do it all. And we wanted more. McGill Players’ had plays on every day of the school year, sometimes as many as four productions on the same day, not just in the Student Union but at Moyse Hall, we even took a production to York University. See the McGill Daily front page spoof of the semi-pornographic “Midnight” magazine that features me as the fictitious character Randy Roddick. (Note the reference to the Roddick Gates and say it slowly and you will get the pun.) We had a larger paying audience for theatre that year than any other English Language theatre in Québec. The summer of 1969, with the financial help of the McGill Alumni Association, I also founded my first theatre company, Theatre XV. We rented Moyse Hall and produced a season of five plays. One of our productions was the North American professional premiere of Pinter’s The Homecoming. A host of actors and artists who later went on to make serious contributions to Canadian theatre and film worked for Theatre XV. David Mamet, who would go on to win Pulitzer prizes as a playwright, and write/direct numerous Hollywood films, was an acting member of the company. My first payed gig as director was Brecht/Weil’s Threepenny Opera for McGill in the Spring of 1970. (See the poster and reviews) When I graduated in 1970, one of my German professors got me into the Schiller Theatre in West Berlin as an Assistant Director, the beginning of 5 years in Europe, learning my craft in professional theatre, “my apprenticeship years” I call them. I was happy to head to Berlin. I wanted to see the work of the Berliner Ensemble, because after the success of Threepenny, Brecht’s interweaving of politics and entertainment had become my personal mission. What would have happened if I had not been nominated as President of the McGill Players? Or if Professor Trudi Reber had not connected me to the Schiller Theatre? In any case… the more I learned and the more things went well for me, the more Theatre and Life became inextricably interwoven.

(Carlo: McGill articles and reviews go here)

2)Half Moon Theatre 1972-75 (Image could be the photo of the theatre)

I arrived in London in the Fall of 1971. Judit Kenyeres, my partner and future wife, had enrolled in a graduate course in the Faculty of Education at the University of London. I tried to break into the English Theatre scene. Good Luck. In 1971 Canada was considered an undeveloped theatrical wilderness inhabited by colonial savages. “Do you actually have any theatre in Canada, old boy?” (Spoken with a posh accent.) Through a roundabout series of contacts that involved playwright Steve Gooch and our mutual admiration for Brecht, I met up with actor Maurice Colborne who was living in an empty East End Synagogue. With the innocence and ignorance of a Cannuk Andy Hardy, I threw out the idea of converting the space into a theatre. I proposed directing Brecht’s early play, In The Jungle Of The Cities. Not knowing what we were getting ourselves into, over many cups of tea, he agreed. To smooth over the acceptance of the idea by the rest of the tenants, at Maurice’s suggestion, I cast one of them other residents of the synagogue as the co-lead in the play.

(Half Moon Reviews and articles go here)

3)Freelance Director 1976-’82

(Balconville set drawing)

4) Toronto Free Theatre/Dream In High Park/Canadian Stage

(Poster: Capture It Live)

5) Infinitheatre 2000-'2020

After the June 1991 hijacking of the Canadian Stage Company I was eager to return home to Montreal. A period of struggling to survive by my wits followed. I directed a few plays free-lance, including the premiere of a Sharon Pollock play at Stratford, Ontario. Wrote the first draft of a television script that became Mama’s Boys, starring Graham Greene and Tom Jackson that was presented nationally by Global TV. I wrote many articles for a variety of newspapers. Even was a literary columnist for the Montreal Gazette. Conceived and was the driving force behind getting Mordecai Richler to permit himself to be roasted at the Ritz Carleton as a fundraiser for English-language writers and theatres. It was also during this period that I wrote and directed a number of radio drama’s for CBC including On Guard For Thee my docu-drama about the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia that ended up winning national broadcast awards. After directing L’Affaire Tartuffe and then Sliding In All Directions for Theatre 1774, one morning Marianne Ackerman phoned me up and asked if I wanted to run her theatre. She had had enough. I jumped at her generous suggestion. Theatre 1774 became Infinithéâtre.

(Fin de Partie Poster)