Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Newton, Christopher
Ontario -based actor/director/playwright and Artistic Director for the Shaw Festival from 1979 to 2002, born in Deal, England, June 11, 1936.
He studied at the University of Leeds, Purdue and University of Illinois before coming here in 1961 to audition for the Stratford Festival and instead found himself working for the Canadian Players , then the Stratford Festival. In 1968 he became Artistic Director for Theatre Calgary and then, from 1973, he was Artistic Director for the Vancouver Playhouse for six years. There he worked with his philosophy of having an ensemble of creators rather than, "jobbing in actors on a season-by-season basis."
He brought this attitude to Shaw and from the first season there, attempted to change the company from a lightweight house to the international powerhouse he envisioned. He began bringing in directors like Derek Goldby and John Hirsch , who changed the face of the Festival. Firstly, Newton felt the company could not survive if it were to present so much Shaw in its lineup. "One's got to realize," he said in interview, "that one can't have a festival devoted solely to Shaw. He's not good enough." This must have rankled many, but he proved that the shift was a good one.
As an actor he had great ability and, early on in his tenure at Shaw, showed it off in Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear, deftly taking the farce to another, even more hilarious, plane.
As a director, he has been praised for pronouncing the theatricality of the Shavian canon and for bringing a current sense of humour to the Shaw Festival. He has directed many of the company's productions, including Noel Coward's Easy Virtue and Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (both in 2000).
In the same year, and away from the Shaw, he directed the Vancouver Playhouse and Grand Theatre, London co-production of She Stoops to Conquer (February, 2000).
He said to CBC in 1999, of producing a play (in this case, Noel Coward's Easy Virtue), "Plays are about the density of experience when you go to the theatre and the density of experience in the rehearsal process... My job as a director is to reveal that complexity in the writing through the actors and they bring their own baggage [as well]...[Directing] is not to simplify, it is to say, 'Look...look...look; all this connects.'"
His plays include: Slow Train to St. Ives ( Manitoba Theatre Centre , 1966), The Sound of Distant Thunder (Vancouver Playhouse, 1977)
In October, 2000, he received the Governor General's Award .
An archival collection on this subject is available at the LW Conolly Theatre Archives at the University of Guelph, Ontario.
(Additional information provided by Christopher Hoile)
Last updated 2009-12-11
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