A Year of Disruption
This article is the end of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary.
Each week for the past year, we’ve celebrated by asking 4 Questions of a range of alumni, across all our disciplines. We now have 54 (we can’t count!) accounts from our alumni, who together tell the story of our department, its history, the people within it, and the impact it’s had on our students over the past 50 years.
Highlights include Artistic Director of the National Arts Centre English Theatre and Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland Jillian Keiley; actor, fight director and sound designer Richard Lee; the clown duo of Morro and Jasp, Heather Marie Annis and Amy Lee; Paul Halferty, a theatre historian and a queer theatre and performance studies scholar at University College Dublin; publicist for performing arts Sue Edworthy; Arts consultant and Founding Artistic Director of the du Maurier World Stage, Lilie Zendel; the multi-talented Luke Reece, who is a producer, playwright, poet and educator; Mary Spyrakis, who runs the prop shop for Canadian Stage; minister with the United Church of Canada, Foster Freed; innovative Broadway, Vegas, West End and Canadian theatre director Jim Millan; award-winning playwright Dave Deveau; South African Director and teacher Geoffrey Hyland; theatre, film, tv and voice actor Sean Baek; award-winning set and costume designer Gillian Gallow; Brussels Belgium-based film curator and arts journalist Chris Dupuis; founder of the Blyth Festival, James Roy; shoe craftsman for theatre, film, tv and circus, Jeff Churchill; and performance artist Shawna Dempsey.
Of course, we think ALL our Disruptors are worthy of a revisit; we hope you’ll explore the depth of material we’ve gathered to help tell the story of our last 50 years, as we look forward to the next 50!
