Reg is our technical director and also playing Inspector Hubbard in “Dial M For Murder”. He was a performer (the “announcer”) in “Retro Radio Hour”.
*anyone who knows Reg will not be surprised by this rather “unique” spotlight!
Bio:
Reg is a graduate of the Film and English programs at UofT, where he has written, directed, and performed original works. Reg is also a member of the Hart House Theatre Standing Committee, and has worked on several of the theatre’s shows operating tech.
Selected Credits: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Arcadia (Hart House Theatre), The Bear (Next Stage Theatre Company). As Writer: Mannequin Ensemble (Hart House Players), The Wormwood Prince (Next Stage Theatre Company). As Director: The Threepenny Opera (UC Follies).
*Being a writer, here is Reg’s interpretation of his bio and interview questions:
From the hilltop you could hear the coast, its star-stirred waves, pulsing under pitch. Sunless dark. The island was too distant to see, except by force of imagination. The silhouette of its stalk grew tall, towering, cursing earth, reaching past night’s canopy.
You held hands with a fir tree blanketed by the season. It shook and scattered snow, and its animation filled you with life. You would make it to the island, when the water turned. You would wait.
1. How did you get started as a performer, a technical director?
Every twist is impatience, jogging the rock, slipping the white earth into the sea. Spring melted the frost and found beneath it glittering sand, coruscant, a land eager to reflect the smiling sky. The fir was in pieces now. You cut it yourself. Equal lengths bound by its bark, its fingers, its skin. Now it would sail with you to the island.
2. What is your favourite part of the creative process?
The wind changed direction, the waves agreed. They skipped and cajoled, straying away from the coast. Did they notice your raft?– as you slipped into their wake. Did they know the fir, before it ferried you between them? Their mischief was too great, the wind’s and the wave’s. They played, and unwittingly carried you to the island.
3. What are some challenges you face as a performer, a technical director?
You landed on rocks, draped in a cloud, weighed down by the shadow of the towering stalk. The landing was rough, and your raft fell apart, so you tie its pieces in a sling and carry it on your back. Above you are branches, or giant leaves. Too high to tell. Mist clings to them, and rolls off in streams. The challenge of imagining a top is too great. You climb the rocks, and make for the base of the stalk.
4. What advice would you give to people pursuing performance, technical direction?
It hears you come, and it creaks. Its size is unfathomable. Whole forests wide, it seems. You long to know it. It has wisdom, it has life. You press against the stalk with your hand, with your head. Inside it sounds like rivers, like canyons, like stars. It has tendrils and vines that greet and curl around you. They touch the pieces of fir, and shiver, recoil. The sounds stop — what has happened? Could the fir have been its child? You gaze up and lose track. There’s a crack like thunder. It begins to fall.
5. What are you most excited for in regards to “Dial ‘M’ for Murder?”
You run for the water. The wind and waves are excited, or scared. You paddle into the current with the bundle of fir beneath your chest, and look up to see the stalk falling away, hitting the water. The force throws you far, under water, into air. The stalk is still plummeting from the sky, falling forever. You can feel the sea surging beneath you, flooding the island and the coast, filling the horizon. The spray darkens the sky.
Night passes in torrents. Come daybreak you are alone. No island, no coast — just the bundle of fir, still holding your hand. A bird circles above you, not sure where to land.
Bygone Theatre 
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