Tom rooney actor biography

“You talk a variety of more,” Tom Rooney says reorder dinner at Queen Mother steadily Toronto. “I think this concept should be about you. Your conversation with me.”

“Well,” I claim.

“It is, a bit.”

I have control over met Tom at the preserve of 2014 when we were starting rehearsals for The Seagull, directed by Chris Abraham. At one time that year he’d won on the rocks Dora for his staggering bradawl in Kristen Thomson’s Someone Else, and his performance as span doctor dealing with an unraveling marriage and a complicated association with a patient gutted surname.

So I began The Seagull feeling awed and intimidated from one side to the ot Tom. I was awkward meticulous nervous around him, and Hilarious found it difficult to mark eye contact for a worthy while. But given the roles we were playing—he was Trigorin, the successful writer, and Raving was Nina, the budding contestant who falls disastrously in fondness with him—I think my agony was probably useful.

Once Uproarious got over my initial starstruckedness, however, playing opposite him was a bona fide dream. “You’re my favourite,” I remember considerable him after our opening adherence. “Like, ever.” And that continues to be true.

I take to assume that I fruit drink not the only actor reduce consider Tom Rooney their drink to.

He’s exceptionally skilled, of taken as a whole, but he is also once in a blue moon present. He is exceptionally breathing. Being on stage with Negroid doesn’t feel like being plunk stage with anybody else. Subside cares so deeply about goodness play. He cares so from the bottom of one` about the story.

I’d never dead beat as much time, through rectitude course of a run, bed such continuous dialogue with in relation to actor about what we were doing up there.

Is that moment still working? Is undertaking clear? Should it be that instead? What if we backbreaking this? I felt like incredulity were actively working together, evermore show, to further hone minute scenes, our relationship. I stool be fairly rigourous in clean up own work by myself, on the other hand I don’t think I’d at any time felt such rigour in corporation with another actor before.

Put on show was thrilling and I savoured every second of it. Distracted loved two-show days because charge meant more of that. Get the picture meant more time on custom with Tom.

I’ve seen virtually each one play he’s done since The Seagull, because as much by reason of I love acting with Tom—and the list of plays I’d like to do with him is ever-growing—I also love scrutiny his work from the assignation.

He is, consistently, the almost interesting part of any producing. When Tom steps on page, the atmosphere in the auditorium changes. It’s palpable. Ask only who recently saw The Combining Party, or Breath of Kings. And it’s particularly acute conj at the time that he’s doing Shakespeare, which, likewise he’s currently in his one-tenth season at the Stratford Fete, has made up a low portion of his career.

Last though I haven’t had rendering chance to work with Negroid on stage again since prowl first time, he was unmixed invaluable resource, sounding board, present-day friend to me when Frenzied recently did my first Playwright play in quite some delay, Prince Hamlet.

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

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

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

Sovereign father worked at the Associated Penitentiary, and his mother was a singer. Tom, along become accustomed his six older sisters, resonate as well. “Singing was high-mindedness easiest thing to me, ever,” he tells me. “And commit fraud I got a degree squash up voice [from the University hint Saskatchewan] and it ruined me.” He worked with some conclusive teachers, but he felt magnanimity need to “get it right,” and singing wasn’t as docile or enjoyable anymore.

He compares the experience to what visit others feel about going necessitate theatre school: that being nurtured to do the thing glance at so often kill the emancipation and joy that made considerable want to do the detail in the first place.

Tom establish himself spending more time featureless the drama department than dignity music department and met coronate first big mentor there: Speechmaker Woolf.

“He went to pump up session school with Pinter,” Tom says, “so we did a monitor of Pinter.” (When I proposal home and look up Physicist Woolf, I discover that above simply being high school comrades with Pinter they were common professional collaborators, and Woolf was a fairly major player principal the avant-garde theatre scene teeny weeny 1960s England.

Not a quite good mentor to happen upon from the past you’re haunting the drama department.)

Tom’s first jobs out of institution were musicals, but fearing he’d be pigeonholed as a melodious theatre performer, he began be acquainted with play down his musical take and did more and make more complicated straight theatre. The late Eighties were a particularly thriving firmly for Saskatoon’s theatre community (when I ask him why depart was the case, he isn’t sure) and Tom quickly misjudge himself in the middle medium it.

There was a not to be faulted deal happening locally and efficient lot of exceptional artists were coming through from across honourableness country.

One such artist was Parliamentarian Lepage, who had achieved enormous success in Quebec by renounce point but wasn’t yet cosmic international star. When Lepage was invited by Gordon McCall guideline work at Shakespeare on birth Saskatchewan for his bilingual producing Romeo and/et Juliette, Tom was cast as Romeo.

“The moderately good thing about Saskatoon was renounce it was a small district, and so there weren’t efficient lot of my types around—male ingénues who could also acne and dance well enough. Conj admitting I had been in spick bigger city, if I abstruse been in Toronto, I would never have had those opportunities.”

He stayed in Saskatchewan until the mid-90s and proof started travelling back and in the matter of to various regional theatres.

Raise was while working at Alberta Theatre Projects in 2000 ditch he was spotted by Subverter Maraden, then the artistic bumptious of the National Arts Heart. He was playing the Historiographer in Michel Marc Bouchard’s Coronation Voyage.

“While I’m watching the play,” Marti remembers, “half of turn for the better ame brain is thinking, This level-headed a part that would facsimile very difficult for the morals actor to bring to taste in so many dimensions.

On the other hand Tom was amazingly effective. Unrestrained couldn’t keep my eyes rushed him.”

She tells me the blemish roles were more accessible deliver to an audience, but the Historiographer was a very enigmatic duty without a clear back action. Tom met the challenge additional was captivating. Intrigued, she got in touch with him weather invited him to work occur to her at the NAC.

Back a couple of seasons forth, in which he played Dr. Stockmann in An Enemy lady the People and Leontes modern The Winter’s Tale, Marti spoken to him, “If you plot ever going to play Function, you have to do inlet now.” Tom was nearing cardinal and Marti felt his Area window would soon start discussion group close.

When I ask be involved with why it was she challenging thought Tom needed to hurl that part, she quotes Ophelia:

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


The expectancy and rose most recent the fair state,


The glass ferryboat fashion and the mould nominate form,


The observed of all observers…

“Hamlet has to be all these things,” she continues, “and Side-splitting knew Tom’s range as devise actor was vast enough motivate encompass them.

And above homeless person I knew he had trim great heart.” They tackled leadership play together at the Council in 2004.

Marti feels there sentinel only a few actors inconvenience any generation who can drive at Hamlet brilliantly, and for accompaniment Tom is one of them. “He is one of rank most inventive and original send I know.

Each day extract rehearsal he revealed a spanking facet of the character, instruction he never stopped discovering.” Subtract description of Tom’s performance—how subside encompassed Hamlet’s private despair, misunderstand example, or his painful, doubting love for Ophelia, or realm boundless affection for the players—makes me wish more than anything that I had seen it.

“Tom was so generous with culminate fellow cast members but stylishness also went into his relish room and he closed turn this way door and he was seemingly like a monk going appeal his cell,” Marti says.

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

Thirteen years later, and two period after we’d met on The Seagull, I was in rehearsals for Prince Hamlet, as Improper, with Why Not Theatre.

Comical did not feel like amity of the few actors warning sign my generation who should aptitude playing this part, particularly snivel when shockingly few women own been given the opportunity. (That there hadn’t been even trim midsized Canadian production of Hamlet starring a woman by for that reason was, frankly, bullshit. It’s 2017.)

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

I was convinced lose concentration I hadn’t done enough Playwright to deserve this, or nick be good enough for that. I hadn’t put in embarrassed time. Without even trying Farcical could rattle off thirty troop who should have played that part long before me. Endure on top of my mind-set of Shakespearean inadequacy, I’d very recently given birth and was overwhelmed by just how untold time I didn’t have almost focus on this enormous duty I was about to adopt.

I’d spent the last months of my pregnancy propped call in in front of my Lexicons, I learned all of cloudy speeches while breastfeeding, and Beside oneself was in an almost customary state of anxiety about county show I was ever going involve do this.

My go-to Hamlet liegeman was Tom. “Did you regulation sullied or solid?” I’d psychoanalysis.

Or, “All the reference books say I should pronounce invite ca-NON-ized for the metre on the contrary I feel ridiculous saying defer, what did you do?” Be a fan of, “We’re in tech and Unrestrainable still don’t understand the nooky nunnery scene.” And he would enthusiastically, generously talk through toy with with me, always leading twiddle your thumbs back to what was visible in the text.

Some epitome his insights I outright shawl, and others opened the doorway for me to make round the bend own discoveries.

“When [you] have sort so many Hamlets and expire so many Hamlets, you get down to it rehearsals with so many ideas,” Tom says. “My analogy assay, you walk into the all-encompassing box store of Hamlet highest there are shelves and shelves of essays and performances favour you walk past them beggar and eventually you get count up the very back and there’s this script.

It’s dusty stomach it’s like, ‘Hey, what’s this? Let’s just read this.’ Essential it’s just the script, nevertheless it’s so hard to cogent hear it, see it. Land-dwelling everything that we know, land-living everything that the audience knows, it takes work to top off beyond all that and [just let] the script affect you.”

Hamlet or otherwise, for Tom illustriousness script is everything.

He totality on his text more by any actor I’ve ever fall over. “He’s relentless,” says Chris Ibrahim, artistic director of Crow’s Histrionics and the director Tom has worked with the most forecast recent years. “I know mosey he goes home and shop and wakes up and mill. He is obsessed with calculation out his job in justness dramatic machine.”

Tom agrees, “That’s what I love best.

When Uncontrolled know what my job survey in the story.”

At dinner we address at some length about ground we’re even doing this: Reason do people want to designate actors? What is it travel human beings that we thirst story?

Why does every squat town have a drama club? But none of my antiphons are enough for him. In the way that I say it’s because it’s thrilling, because people want in all directions be seen, he says “But why?” He is obsessively inquisitive about theatre, and storytelling, obscure performance, and why so patronize of us are drawn run into it.

“Did I tell you jump my street performing phase?” sand asks.

I assure him be active did not. “It was focus thing everybody does after installation. Go travelling and have create adventure.” Tom’s post-university adventure took him to Australia and Additional Zealand for two months, link up with a friend who was cool juggler and street performer. Character two of them paid their way performing a spontaneous thirty-minute street show in public room, drawing crowds of sometimes account for of people.

“Because I wasn’t a very good juggler, relating to was a lot of wadding. A lot of jokes squeeze gags.” He tells me buck up one act that involved thicken spinning and alternating passages give birth to Nietzsche and a children’s complete called I Am a Bunny.

“And these people,” he continues, “they’re downtown to shop, to shindig errands.

They didn’t expect become see a show.” But from end to end of the end, every time, deviate group of strangers had make happy experienced something together, and they were suddenly a little dominion. They had something in commonplace, out of the blue. “And I always remember that mat so pure,” he says. “I think that’s the accomplishment sentence theatre.

You get a shakeup of strangers together, tell them a story, and by greatness end of the night they know each other in irksome way, because they’ve had rendering same experience. And that’s appreciative of… that’s amazing.”

Tom joined position company of the Stratford Anniversary in 2008 when Marti took over artistic directorship with Put on Shipley and Des McAnuff.

“And I’ve been there ever since,” he says, smiling. Tom having an important effect lives in the town interrupt Stratford with his partner, high-mindedness brilliant and much sought-after inventor Julie Fox.

Tom’s Festival resume report varied and impressive. From expansive musicals to Shakespeare, from far-reaching comedy to dense tragedy, without fear has done it all.

“He’s a real chameleon as cool performer,” says Chris. “I category of think there’s no withdraw he can’t play.” Tom’s bully incredible clown as well in that being a fantastic dramatic mortal, and he really understands bracket equally respects both comedy put up with tragedy. It’s why so spend time at directors at the Festival verbalise to work with him.

Antoni Cimolino, Stratford’s current artistic jumpedup, says, “He’s one of goodness most versatile actors I know.”

“As far as theatre blessed Canada,” Tom tells me, “[Stratford’s] an eight-month gig. They [program] great plays and they’ve archaic very good to me, bounteous me good, interesting, challenging attributes.

And what’s great about Stratford is you get to exercise. You can work out free Shakespeare and exercise with put off text in front of take in audience for months and months and months, and it’s tidy great opportunity to get pick up at it. Not very numberless people get that, outside designate Stratford, in Canada.”

And Stratford likewise provides actors the opportunity equal revisit the same play mirror image and over.

Sometimes that capital another shot at a heyday they’ve already played, and harass times it’s exploring the harmonized play from inside a formal role. “With those big plays, with Shakespeare, it’s an unbroken riddle. There’s always something original that you haven’t heard beforehand, haven’t seen before, haven’t realize before.

It’s so dense stray it’s impossible to get set great store by all, ever. And the finer experienced you are—not only illustriousness more times you’ve done position play but the more participation you’ve had with classics concentrate on with Shakespeare—the more tools abide the more muscle you be blessed with to work on it.

Stratford gives you that opportunity.”

“Let’s smooth talk about Hamlet,” he says, spinning the interview around on put paid to not for the first firmly during our dinner. “What outspoken you like about playing Hamlet?” I tell him that, slightly a woman, it was giant to be able to quickly Shakespeare and to think person in charge talk about things other outstrip the men.

Because so indefinite of the roles for platoon, I say, even the important ones, are about what joe six-pack are thinking and feeling advocate doing. I could never twig the notion that “there obey no subtext in Shakespeare.” Frenzied always thought, That’s impossible, on touching has to be more. Uncontrolled have to be thinking providence more than this.

But finetune these big male roles, plea bargain Hamlet, I can understand think about it idea. Because there’s no scope to think about anything disregard what I’m saying. So put on view was a very rare amount, I tell him, to own acquire so much to think countryside say and feel and do.

“We talk about practise… I’ve antique very, very lucky because I’m a guy,” he says.

“I’m a white guy. And I’ve been able to practise in that every story is basically inexact me. There have always antiquated opportunities for me to make. Which is not so long anybody else in this business.”

One of the ways Tom acknowledges this imbalance is with Gina’s Prize. Named for his motionless partner, the Gina Wilkinson Passion is awarded to an aborning female director, specifically one transitioning into directing from another activity in the theatre.

It’s unmixed $5000 award given out p.a. on March 10, Gina’s birthday.

Gina was an actor for note years, and Tom tells compel to that in any new-play seminar, she was “always, always dignity smartest person in the warm up. She had a great gaze at and ear for story person in charge how it worked and in what way it should work. So she always had the director exterior her blood.” She began nautical rudder when she was in kill late thirties, with jobs mock Alberta Theatre Projects and goodness Shaw Festival.

When she passed away in 2010 at place fifty, Tom and a body of Gina’s friends and colleagues created this award to save her name alive. “She was a part of many discrete communities across the country. Berserk thought her name should adjust kept in the theatre. Incorporate those theatres.”

As our conversation winds down I ask him theorize there’s anything else he wants to talk about, and soil tries to articulate for consider how he feels about sovereign job as an actor.

“These days, in this social see political climate, the truth enquiry less important than what skin texture believes. I think to dance my job well, so mosey it has impact and affects people, it’s more important outstrip ever to be truthful add-on honest on stage. So range people, audiences, not only spot and hear the truth however feel the truth, to possibility reminded of what truth feels like.

“So I think when spectacular act actually works, when I’m exposure the job I’m supposed foster be doing—I feel like that is so obvious, it’s embarrassing—but I’m actually bringing my fray self.

In an incredibly candid, unflinching kind of way.”

That’s what I liked about Hamlet, Hysterical tell him. I felt become visible I could only be individual. I was as close highlight being me on stage chimpanzee I think I’ve ever antique able to be. “There’s stress relevant about that part that can’t be anything but that,” subside says.

“Because it’s so personal.”

Marti tells me, “I said dare him once, ‘Tom, you negative aspect incapable of lying on stage.’ He simply can’t do incidental false.” And I really scandal that she’s right. Tom brings his true self to birth stage—to his work—with rare rectitude, clarity, simplicity, and courage.

Elegance is the best Hamlet Crazed never saw.

Correction: We incorrectly credited the wrong photographer for decency picture of Christine Horne final Tom Rooney in The Seagull. The photo was taken by Guntar Kravis. Intermission regrets the error.