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Participant Bios

Antoni Cimolino (Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, Faith and Religion in Shakespeare’s Plays, Exhibition Talks, Talking Theatre)

Antoni Cimolino is Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival and director of this season’s Mary Stuart and The Merchant of Venice. Stratford: Directing credits include Cymbeline, with Geraint Wyn Davies; The Grapes of Wrath, with Janet Wright; Bartholomew Fair; Coriolanus, with Colm Feore and Martha Henry; As You Like It, featuring original music by Barenaked Ladies; King John, with Stephen Ouimette; Love’s Labour’s Lost, with Brian Bedford; Twelfth Night, with William Hutt; The Night of the Iguana, with Seana McKenna; and Filumena, with Richard Monette. Among his other accomplishments, Mr. Cimolino was instrumental in establishing the Festival’s Endowment Foundation, which has raised more than $50 million to date, as well as in the renovation of its Avon Theatre and the creation of its Studio Theatre. Elsewhere: The Canadian première of ENRON (Theatre Calgary); Twelfth Night (Attic Theatre, Detroit); A Woman of No Importance (Hilberry Theater, Detroit). A champion of the arts and culture, Mr. Cimolino serves as the National Chair of Culture Days, a nationwide celebration of arts and culture in Canada. He has initiated collaborations with several prestigious theatre companies, including Montreal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, New York’s Lincoln Center and City Center, and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He also spearheaded the Festival’s involvement in a joint project with CUSO International, Canada’s international volunteer co-operation agency, to establish a performing arts and educational centre in the city of Suchitoto, El Salvador.

Brian Dennehy (For the Love of Godot)

Third season: Earl of Shrewsbury in Mary Stuart and Pozzo in Waiting for Godot. Stratford:Krapp’s Last Tape, Hughie, All’s Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Homecoming. Broadway:Death of a Salesman, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Tony Awards – Best Actor); Translations, Inherit the Wind (with Chris Plummer), Desire Under the Elms, Peter Brook’s The Cherry Orchard. Chicago: With director Bob Falls, Goodman Theatre: Galileo, Touch of the Poet, The Iceman Cometh (twice), Hughie, Death of a Salesman, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Desire Under the Elms. Krapp’s Last Tape (director Jennifer Tarver); Rat in the Skull (director Steve Robman). London:Death of a Salesman (Olivier Award). Movies:First Blood, Gorky Park, Never Cry Wolf, Cocoon, F/X, Tommy Boy, 10, Presumed Innocent, Belly of an Architect and others. Upcoming: Terrence Malick’s Untitled, BBC’s Final Flight. Television:To Catch a Killer, Burden of Proof, Our Fathers and many others. Too many. Six Emmy nominations. Person Most Responsible for All of Above: Susan Smith, agent and best friend.

Paul Edmondson (Faith and Religion in Shakespeare’s Plays)

Rev. Dr. Paul Edmondson is Head of Knowledge and Research at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and director of its Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival. He is a trustee of the Rose Theatre Trust, co-series editor for Palgrave Macmillan’s Shakespeare Handbooks and co-supervisory editor of the Penguin Shakespeare (for which he has contributed to several introductions). He is also Chair of the Hosking Houses Trust. His publications include Twelfth Night: A Guide to the Text and Its Theatrical Life and (co-authored with Stanley Wells) Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Coffee with Shakespeare. He has published on Shakespeare’s influence on the Brontës (Brontë Studies and Shakespeare Survey). He contributed an essay on the poetry of Marlowe and Shakespeare for The Cambridge History of English Poetry (May 2010) and has just completed an essay on Harriet Walter for Actors’ Shakespeare (Routledge, 2011). He wrote the script for the Shakespeare Centre’s Life, Love, and Legacy exhibition and co-curated Shakespeare Found: A Life Portrait. He was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 2011.

Mavis Himes (Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare)

Dr. Mavis Himes is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto. She is also a consultant at Wellspring, a psychosocial cancer centre for people living with cancer and their families. Dr. Himes is Director of the Speaking of Lacan Psychoanalytic Association (SOL) in Toronto, a group that sponsors guest speakers, seminars and interdisciplinary workshops on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. She has written and presented on a number of topics on psychoanalysis and is the author of The Sacred Body: A Therapist’s Body, which details her work in the cancer field. She is currently working on a book titled The Proper Name. Dr. Himes has a particular interest in the performing arts and, through SOL, she has been hosting a series entitled Psychoanalysis and the Arts: In Conversation, in which she discusses works with artists from the fields of dance, music and theatre.

Seamus O'Regan (The Kind of Life It's Been)

Seamus O'Regan was co-host of CTV's Canada AM, Canada’s number one morning show, for nine years. He also helmed The O’Regan Files and Arts & Minds on Bravo. During the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, he hosted Olympic Morning from Whistler, B.C. He studied politics at St. Francis Xavier University and University College, Dublin, and marketing strategies at INSEAD, the international business school near Paris. He received his Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge, England. Seamus is from St. John's, Newfoundland, and was raised in Goose Bay, Labrador.

Pat Quigley (Talking Theatre)

Pat Quigley graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Victoria College of the University of Toronto, the university from which she later also received her bachelor of education. Beginning her career as a secondary school teacher of English, Pat also explored the areas of drama and guidance and later taught both drama and guidance specialist courses through the faculties of education at the universities of Western Ontario and Toronto. During her teaching tenure, Pat directed several student productions including Cabaret, Grease, West Side Story and Our Town. She was a founding member of an amateur theatre company, Epiphany Theatre, where she performed such roles as Lenny in Crimes of the Heart, May in Fool for Love, the mother in True West and Ellen/Mrs. Saunders/Betty in Cloud 9. For 18 years, she served as the Education Manager of the Stratford Festival, where her dedication to the arts and arts education continued to inspire her work. In 2004 she was promoted to Director of Education and Archives at the Festival. Pat retired from this position in 2010 and now serves as the Festival’s Education Consultant. She currently serves or has served on various boards or committees which promote arts education, such as the Teachers-Festival Liaison Council, the Western Ontario Regional Arts Advisory Committee, the Ontario Arts Education Institute and the Foundation for the Enrichment of Education Huron/Perth.

Jennifer Tarver (For the Love of Godot)

Fifth season: Director of Waiting for Godot. Stratford: The Homecoming, King of Thieves, Zastrozzi, Krapp’s Last Tape. Elsewhere: Hedda Gabler (Hartford Stage), Beckett: Feck It! (Queen of Puddings/Canadian Stage), Krapp’s Last Tape (Goodman Theatre), Crave (Nightwood Theatre), Thom Pain (based on nothing) (Tarragon Theatre), Ines (Queen of Puddings Music Theatre), That Time – Five Beckett Shorts (The Theatre Centre), Attempts on Her Life (Ryerson University). As writer and director: Not Faust, History Play and She’s Gone Away (Theatre Extasis/Hum). Opera: The Rape of Lucretia, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, The Magic Flute, The Turn of the Screw, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Così fan Tutte. Awards: 2010 Siminovitch Prize short list, the 2002 John Hirsch Director’s Award and the 2006 Pauline McGibbon Award in Directing, as well as multiple Dora Awards for outstanding direction and writing.

Support for the inaugural season of
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