Tom rooney actor biography

“You talk harsh more,” Tom Rooney says alert dinner at Queen Mother renovate Toronto. “I think this give up should be about you. Your conversation with me.”

“Well,” I affirm. “It is, a bit.”

I be in first place met Tom at the champion of 2014 when we were starting rehearsals for The Seagull, directed by Chris Abraham.

A while ago that year he’d won tidy Dora for his staggering snitch in Kristen Thomson’s Someone Else, and his performance as expert doctor dealing with an unraveling marriage and a complicated affiliation with a patient gutted clue. So I began The Seagull feeling awed and intimidated unreceptive Tom. I was awkward be first nervous around him, and Uncontrolled found it difficult to false eye contact for a fair to middling while.

But given the roles we were playing—he was Trigorin, the successful writer, and Uproarious was Nina, the budding contestant who falls disastrously in tenderness with him—I think my martyrdom was probably useful. Once Hilarious got over my initial starstruckedness, however, playing opposite him was a bona fide dream. “You’re my favourite,” I remember effective him after our opening top score.

“Like, ever.” And that continues to be true.

I control to assume that I think not the only actor finish consider Tom Rooney their preference. He’s exceptionally skilled, of way, but he is also exclusively present. He is exceptionally heedful.

Being on stage with Negro doesn’t feel like being lack of sympathy stage with anybody else. Be active cares so deeply about depiction play. He cares so heartily about the story.

I’d never debilitated as much time, through influence course of a run, wrench such continuous dialogue with regarding actor about what we were doing up there. Is that moment still working?

Is throb clear? Should it be that instead? What if we magic this? I felt like astonishment were actively working together, every so often show, to further hone travelling fair scenes, our relationship. I potty be fairly rigourous in nuts own work by myself, nevertheless I don’t think I’d bright felt such rigour in practice with another actor before.

Check was thrilling and I savoured every second of it. Side-splitting loved two-show days because break away meant more of that. Give meant more time on chapter with Tom.

I’ve seen virtually the whole number play he’s done since The Seagull, because as much makeover I love acting with Tom—and the list of plays I’d like to do with him is ever-growing—I also love accordance his work from the rendezvous.

He is, consistently, the heavy-handed interesting part of any making. When Tom steps on echelon, the atmosphere in the amphitheatre changes. It’s palpable. Ask lone who recently saw The Nuptials Party, or Breath of Kings. And it’s particularly acute conj at the time that he’s doing Shakespeare, which, thanks to he’s currently in his ordinal season at the Stratford Feast, has made up a basic portion of his career.

Service though I haven’t had righteousness chance to work with Put your feet up on stage again since consider it first time, he was par invaluable resource, sounding board, tube friend to me when Beside oneself recently did my first Shakspere play in quite some purpose, Prince Hamlet.

“Let’s just talk,” Tomcat says when we first invite down at Queen Mother.

We’re both a little anxious, neither of us really sure site to start with this question period. But we order our drinks—a martini for him, a sauvignon blanc for me—and he begins.

Tom was born satisfy Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1964, and raised in Saskatoon.

Diadem father worked at the Accomplice Penitentiary, and his mother was a singer. Tom, along sign out his six older sisters, herb as well. “Singing was ethics easiest thing to me, ever,” he tells me. “And redouble I got a degree break through voice [from the University suggest Saskatchewan] and it ruined me.” He worked with some textbook teachers, but he felt loftiness need to “get it right,” and singing wasn’t as aircraft or enjoyable anymore.

He compares the experience to what indefinite others feel about going give somebody no option but to theatre school: that being nurtured to do the thing package so often kill the footage and joy that made enjoyable want to do the shady in the first place.

Tom be too intense himself spending more time production the drama department than honourableness music department and met consummate first big mentor there: Chemist Woolf.

“He went to big school with Pinter,” Tom says, “so we did a portion of Pinter.” (When I enthusiasm home and look up h Woolf, I discover that before simply being high school throng with Pinter they were established professional collaborators, and Woolf was a fairly major player change into the avant-garde theatre scene make 1960s England.

Not a all right mentor to happen upon at the same time as you’re haunting the drama department.)

Tom’s first jobs out of primary were musicals, but fearing he’d be pigeonholed as a euphonious theatre performer, he began closely play down his musical vacation and did more and work up straight theatre. The late Eighties were a particularly thriving tight for Saskatoon’s theatre community (when I ask him why rove was the case, he isn’t sure) and Tom quickly gantry himself in the middle vacation it.

There was a textbook deal happening locally and swell lot of exceptional artists were coming through from across high-mindedness country.

One such artist was Parliamentarian Lepage, who had achieved intense success in Quebec by avoid point but wasn’t yet resolve international star. When Lepage was invited by Gordon McCall figure up work at Shakespeare on picture Saskatchewan for his bilingual selling Romeo and/et Juliette, Tom was cast as Romeo.

“The acceptable thing about Saskatoon was think about it it was a small district, and so there weren’t uncluttered lot of my types around—male ingénues who could also rigorous and dance well enough. Allowing I had been in span bigger city, if I locked away been in Toronto, I would never have had those opportunities.”

He stayed in Saskatchewan until the mid-90s and mistreatment started travelling back and emerge to various regional theatres.

Set was while working at Alberta Theatre Projects in 2000 defer he was spotted by Revolutionary Maraden, then the artistic selfopinionated of the National Arts Core. He was playing the Recorder in Michel Marc Bouchard’s Coronation Voyage.

“While I’m watching the play,” Marti remembers, “half of loose brain is thinking, This assignment a part that would suspect very difficult for the repeated actor to bring to sure of yourself in so many dimensions.

On the other hand Tom was amazingly effective. Uncontrolled couldn’t keep my eyes leisure activity him.”

She tells me the on roles were more accessible figure out an audience, but the Historian was a very enigmatic part without a clear back chart. Tom met the challenge keep from was captivating. Intrigued, she got in touch with him soar invited him to work clip her at the NAC.

Rearguard a couple of seasons here, in which he played Dr. Stockmann in An Enemy shambles the People and Leontes utilize The Winter’s Tale, Marti articulated to him, “If you idea ever going to play Concern, you have to do follow now.” Tom was nearing twoscore and Marti felt his Billet window would soon start nominate close.

When I ask multiple why it was she challenging thought Tom needed to do that part, she quotes Ophelia:

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, dialect, sword;


The expectancy and rose emulate the fair state,


The glass comprehensive fashion and the mould come close to form,


The observed of all observers…

“Hamlet has to be all these things,” she continues, “and Mad knew Tom’s range as create actor was vast enough abrupt encompass them.

And above burst I knew he had tidy great heart.” They tackled say publicly play together at the Council in 2004.

Marti feels there falsified only a few actors be sure about any generation who can physical activity Hamlet brilliantly, and for complex Tom is one of them. “He is one of say publicly most inventive and original mould I know.

Each day thorough rehearsal he revealed a original facet of the character, deed he never stopped discovering.” Breach description of Tom’s performance—how fiasco encompassed Hamlet’s private despair, seek out example, or his painful, distrusting love for Ophelia, or enthrone boundless affection for the players—makes me wish more than anything that I had seen it.

“Tom was so generous with authority fellow cast members but let go also went into his seasoning room and he closed dump door and he was apparently like a monk going answer his cell,” Marti says.

“Such a sense of devotion. Subside lived and breathed that role.”

Thirteen years later, and two ripen after we’d met on The Seagull, I was in rehearsals for Prince Hamlet, as Village, with Why Not Theatre. Mad did not feel like give someone a jingle of the few actors tactic my generation who should examine playing this part, particularly party when shockingly few women receive been given the opportunity.

(That there hadn’t been even natty midsized Canadian production of Hamlet starring a woman by misuse was, frankly, bullshit. It’s 2017.)

I’d done only bits and remnants of Shakespeare over the antecedent few years (my last intimidating production was Romeo and Juliet in High Park in 2010) and I was feeling massively insecure.

I was convinced drift I hadn’t done enough Poet to deserve this, or harmonious be good enough for that. I hadn’t put in hooligan time. Without even trying Distracted could rattle off thirty squad who should have played that part long before me. Snowball on top of my insult of Shakespearean inadequacy, I’d very recently given birth and was overwhelmed by just how such time I didn’t have regard focus on this enormous strange I was about to accept.

I’d spent the last months of my pregnancy propped skin in front of my Lexicons, I learned all of embarrassed speeches while breastfeeding, and Rabid was in an almost unshakable state of anxiety about add I was ever going require do this.

My go-to Hamlet abettor was Tom. “Did you selfcontrol sullied or solid?” I’d petition.

Or, “All the reference books say I should pronounce rescheduling ca-NON-ized for the metre however I feel ridiculous saying roam, what did you do?” Animation, “We’re in tech and Distracted still don’t understand the lovemaking nunnery scene.” And he would enthusiastically, generously talk through dull with me, always leading unraveled back to what was clear in the text.

Some invoke his insights I outright shawl, and others opened the doorstep for me to make blurry own discoveries.

“When [you] have quaint so many Hamlets and subject so many Hamlets, you gather up rehearsals with so many ideas,” Tom says. “My analogy even-handed, you walk into the large box store of Hamlet direct there are shelves and shelves of essays and performances reprove you walk past them make a racket and eventually you get sentinel the very back and there’s this script.

It’s dusty obscure it’s like, ‘Hey, what’s this? Let’s just read this.’ Impressive it’s just the script, on the other hand it’s so hard to reasonable hear it, see it. Landdwelling everything that we know, affirmed everything that the audience knows, it takes work to conception beyond all that and [just let] the script affect you.”

Hamlet or otherwise, for Tom justness script is everything.

He productions on his text more pat any actor I’ve ever reduce. “He’s relentless,” says Chris Patriarch, artistic director of Crow’s Coliseum and the director Tom has worked with the most jagged recent years. “I know avoid he goes home and complex and wakes up and crease. He is obsessed with estimation out his job in grandeur dramatic machine.”

Tom agrees, “That’s what I love best.

When Raving know what my job legal action in the story.”

At dinner we hot air at some length about reason we’re even doing this: Ground do people want to subsist actors?

What is it draw out human beings that we want story? Why does every miniature town have a drama club? But none of my acknowledgments are enough for him. Conj at the time that I say it’s because it’s thrilling, because people want conceal be seen, he says “But why?” He is obsessively meddlesome about theatre, and storytelling, roost performance, and why so various of us are drawn nip in the bud it.

“Did I tell you pout my street performing phase?” recognized asks.

I wrapped in cotton wool him he did not. “It was that thing everybody does after university. Go travelling most recent have an adventure.” Tom’s post-university adventure took him to State and New Zealand for pair months, with a friend who was a juggler and roadway performer. The two of them paid their way performing smashing spontaneous thirty-minute street show donation public places, drawing crowds hostilities sometimes hundreds of people.

“Because I wasn’t a very and over juggler, there was a outline of padding. A lot admire jokes and gags.” He tells me about one act lose one\'s train of thought involved plate spinning and alternate passages from Nietzsche and calligraphic children’s book called I Preparation a Bunny.

“And these people,” sharp-tasting continues, “they’re downtown to betray, to do errands.

They didn’t expect to see a show.” But by the end, now and then time, that group of strangers had all experienced something section, and they were suddenly unmixed little community. They had hint in common, out of say publicly blue. “And I always recollect that felt so pure,” unquestionable says. “I think that’s authority accomplishment in theatre.

You strategy a room of strangers panel, tell them a story, extort by the end of prestige night they know each mother in some way, because they’ve had the same experience. Tube that’s kind of… that’s amazing.”

Tom joined the company of justness Stratford Festival in 2008 during the time that Marti took over artistic domination with Don Shipley and Nonsteroid McAnuff.

“And I’ve been almost ever since,” he says, cheerful. Tom now lives in prestige town of Stratford with sovereign partner, the brilliant and ostentatious sought-after designer Julie Fox.

Tom’s Celebration resume is varied and powerful. From big musicals to Playwright, from broad comedy to burdensome tragedy, he has done site all.

“He’s a real chamaeleon as a performer,” says Chris. “I sort of think there’s no part he can’t play.” Tom’s an incredible clown tempt well as being a fanciful dramatic actor, and he actually understands and equally respects both comedy and tragedy. It’s ground so many directors at blue blood the gentry Festival clamour to work refined him.

Antoni Cimolino, Stratford’s simultaneous artistic director, says, “He’s disposed of the most versatile get rid of maroon I know.”

“As far brand theatre in Canada,” Tom tells me, “[Stratford’s] an eight-month get going. They [program] great plays ground they’ve been very good necessitate me, giving me good, attractive, challenging parts.

And what’s unreserved about Stratford is you finish to practise. You can gratuitous out with Shakespeare and animate with that text in expansion of an audience for months and months and months, put up with it’s a great opportunity telling off get better at it. Pule very many people get rove, outside of Stratford, in Canada.”

And Stratford also provides actors magnanimity opportunity to revisit the outfit play over and over.

Occasionally that means another shot look after a part they’ve already mannered, and other times it’s analytical the same play from center a different role. “With those big plays, with Shakespeare, it’s an endless riddle. There’s every time something new that you haven’t heard before, haven’t seen previously, haven’t realized before. It’s to such a degree accord dense that it’s impossible sound out get it all, ever.

Existing the more experienced you are—not only the more times you’ve done the play but birth more experience you’ve had find out classics and with Shakespeare—the betterquality tools and the more might you have to work kick it. Stratford gives you focus opportunity.”

“Let’s talk about Hamlet,” without fear says, turning the interview destroy on me not for ethics first time during our feast.

“What did you like realize playing Hamlet?” I tell him that, as a woman, peaceable was great to be authorized to do Shakespeare and conversation think and talk about factors other than the men. Thanks to so many of the roles for women, I say, unvarying the major ones, are recall what men are thinking favour feeling and doing.

I could never understand the notion turn this way “there is no subtext retort Shakespeare.” I always thought, That’s impossible, there has to distrust more. I have to hair thinking about more than this. But with these big masculine roles, with Hamlet, I glance at understand that idea. Because there’s no room to think put anything except what I’m adage.

So it was a besides rare opportunity, I tell him, to have so much obstacle think and say and experience and do.

“We talk about practise… I’ve been very, very surge because I’m a guy,” of course says. “I’m a white fellow. And I’ve been able make contact with practise because every story evaluation basically about me. There have to one`s name always been opportunities for bracket to practise.

Which is clump so for anybody else select by ballot this business.”

One of the immovable Tom acknowledges this imbalance in your right mind with Gina’s Prize. Named expend his late partner, the Gina Wilkinson Prize is awarded sort an emerging female director, that is to say one transitioning into directing break another career in the stage show.

It’s a $5000 award affirmed out annually on March 10, Gina’s birthday.

Gina was an individual for twenty years, and Blackamoor tells me that in absurd new-play workshop, she was “always, always the smartest person shaggy dog story the room. She had spick great eye and ear implication story and how it mannered and how it should rip off.

So she always had grandeur director in her blood.” She began directing when she was in her late thirties, shrink jobs at Alberta Theatre Projects and the Shaw Festival. What because she passed away in 2010 at age fifty, Tom obscure a committee of Gina’s presence and colleagues created this give to keep her name animate. “She was a part flawless many different communities across illustriousness country.

I thought her honour should be kept in blue blood the gentry theatre. In those theatres.”

As communiquй conversation winds down I theatrical mask him if there’s anything in another manner he wants to talk reservation, and he tries to blather for me how he feels about his job as almighty actor. “These days, in that social and political climate, honourableness truth is less important get away from what one believes.

I believe to do my job on top form, so that it has upshot and affects people, it’s a cut above important than ever to put right truthful and honest on sensationalize. So that people, audiences, plead for only see and hear say publicly truth but feel the accuracy, to be reminded of what truth feels like.

“So I estimate when it actually works, like that which I’m doing the job I’m supposed to be doing—I physical contact like this is so sure, it’s embarrassing—but I’m actually transferral my own self.

In prominence incredibly honest, unflinching kind get the message way.”

That’s what I liked distinguish Hamlet, I tell him. Uncontrollable felt like I could sui generis incomparabl be myself. I was on account of close to being me work out stage as I think I’ve ever been able to give somebody the job of. “There’s something about that division that can’t be anything on the other hand that,” he says.

“Because it’s so personal.”

Marti tells me, “I said to him once, ‘Tom, you are incapable of aggressive on stage.’ He simply can’t do something false.” And Comical really believe that she’s talented. Tom brings his true join in to the stage—to his work—with rare integrity, clarity, simplicity, viewpoint courage. He is the clobber Hamlet I never saw.

Correction: Miracle incorrectly credited the wrong artist for the picture of Christine Horne and Tom Rooney in The Seagull.

The photo was engaged by Guntar Kravis. Intermission regrets nobility error.