Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Rose, Richard
Ontario -based director, founding Artistic Director of Toronto's Necessary Angel Theatre. Since 2002 he has been the Artistic Director of the Tarragon Theatre .
For Necessary Angel, Richard Rose has directed David Young 's Inexpressible Island , adaptations of Michael Ondaatje 's Coming Through Slaughter and Timothy Findley 's Not Wanted on the Voyage, as well as productions of John Krizanc 's Tamara , The Half of It and Prague , among many others.
For Stratford Festival he has directed Taming of the Shrew, Coriolanus,Comedy of Errors, As You Like It and Robertson Davies ' World of Wonders and Jean-Marc Dalpé 's Eddy .
He has directed at several other companies, including Canadian Stage (Arcadia, Transit of Venus ), Tarragon ( Jason Sherman 's It's All True, January, 1999, revived at Buddies in Bad Times in October, 1999) and Great Canadian Theatre Company (Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid ) and for opera and film. In 2000 he directed his adaptation of King Lear, Hysterica and Titus Andronicus ( Stratford . He also directed David Young 's Clout at the National Arts Centre (January, 2001).
During his tenure as A.D. of the Tarragon, he has directed Rocking the Cradle, House of Many Tongues, Another Home Invasion by Joan MacLeod (2009), Moliere, Alias Godot by Brendan Gall, Democracy by John Murrell , Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad (2008), The Oxford Roof Climber's Rebellion by Stephen Massicotte (2006), among others.
In January, 2000, Richard Rose told Eye (Toronto) of his own work with Necessary Angel, "[We] won't approach things simply...we want to look at the contradictions, to look at paradox and people wrestling with desire and personal history and politics. I guess I look for a certain three-dimensionality of experience. When I read plays that don't seem to interest or suit me, it's usually because they don't incorporate the fact that a person is thinking. There's a great Howard Barker line from The Possibilities: 'The common man? I never met him.' I'm trying to avoid moving to 'common,' I guess. I'm interested in plays where people think as well as feel."
An archival collection on this subject is available at the LW Conolly Theatre Archives at the University of Guelph, Ontario.
Information provided by Lindy Cooksey
Last updated 2010-02-24
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