A Life in the Theatre: Des McAnuff
By Mervyn Rothstein
14 Mar 2009
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Des McAnuff
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Meet Guys and Dolls and Jersey Boys director Des McAnuff, artistic director of Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
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"For me, every project in the theatre is an excuse to enter a new universe," the director, producer and writer Des McAnuff says. "In just the last few months I've gone from the high Renaissance in Italy with Romeo and Juliet to 45 B.C. in Alexandria with George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra to Damon Runyon's New York as seen through Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows with Guys and Dolls to 11th-century Scotland with Macbeth. And the most exciting thing in exploring all these universes is applying them to our own lives and times."
McAnuff has been inhabiting those universes of the imagination for nearly 40 years now. He has won two Tony Awards, as Best Director for Big River in 1985 and The Who's Tommy in 1993, and garnered directing nominations for Jersey Boys in 2006 and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 1995, as well as a writing nomination for Best Book of a Musical for The Who's Tommy.
He was artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse in California from 1983 to 1994 and 2001 to 2007, establishing La Jolla as one of the best regional stages in the country and winning the Tony for Best Regional Theatre in 1993. He is currently artistic director of the legendary Stratford Shakespeare Festival in his native Ontario, Canada.
As a member of the renowned Dodger Theatricals producing team, he has also co-produced many Broadway shows, among them
Titanic,
Urinetown and revivals of
The King and I,
42nd Street and
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And that
Guys and Dolls he mentioned is the current Broadway production he's directing at the Nederlander Theatre, starring Lauren Graham and Oliver Platt.
To McAnuff, a love of the theatre "starts with childhood play — I don't think it starts in university or even in a school play. I think it begins at a much earlier age, with a passion for make-believe, even before you're conscious of it." And, looking back, that's when he thinks his need for a life involving the stage began.
He grew up in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. "I was born in Illinois, but my dad was killed in a car crash before I was born and I ended up in Canada with my grandparents and then my mother. My mom and my stepfather were both interested in the arts — he was a French-horn player and she was involved in amateur theatre — and they encouraged a passion for music and theatre."
But the person who influenced him the most, he says, was an uncle — "Eric Aldwinckle, a Canadian composer, painter and graphic designer who worked for the Stratford Festival. He kindled my interest in music. He was one of those magical people who I had the good luck to encounter. And now that I'm artistic director at Stratford it's like the completion of a journey — I remember him telling me stories, when I was 10 or 11, about Alec Guinness and Tyrone Guthrie."
Continued...
