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John Wright and Marianne Copithorne in Jim Guedo’s Phoenix Theatre producion of A Lie of the Mind, 1987. Photo by Ed Ellis.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

With the passing of John Wright last weekend, far too soon at 74, the Canadian theatre and its audiences have lost not only a superb artist and mentor but an engaging, authentic, real-life character with a uniquely magnetic presence off the stage too. Edmonton theatre has been the particular beneficiary of his multiple gifts.

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At last Sunday’s sad news, a strange and wonderful reaction started happening on Facebook. FB erupted with tributes to a formidable talent lost, of course. And these were accompanied by a virtual gallery of re-posts by the recipients of the beautiful, personalized digital birthday cards, with portraits, specially designed by Wright for the members of his beloved theatre ‘family’. As his health declined in the last few years and he retired from the stage, Wright, who’d taken up photography in a very creative way, fashioned individual pieces of art for his fellow artists and theatre lovers. And there’s something very Wright-like in that sharing.

The theatre community is saluting, in an outpouring of admiration, the electric connection Wright always made onstage with audiences, in a wide range of roles, the classics to contemporary theatre, Scrooge to Lear, low-life hitmen to unravelling kings, booze-soaked patriarchs to preening aristocrats to washed-up poets. And they’re remembering the offstage Wright with great affection: the wicked sense of humour, the signature combination of crusty on the surface — he was the reigning monarch of the withering observation about the state of the culture, politics, the theatre industry — kind and sweetly thoughtful within.

John Wright as Macbeth, Freewill Shakespeare Festival 1999. Photo by Ryan Parker

That warm embrace is why summer Shakespeare cast parties invariably happened in his garden, a kind of Midsummer Night’s Dream nature walk in itself, that Wright created behind the Westmount house where he lived with his theatre star wife Marianne Copithorne and an assortment of dogs.

Wright’s curmudgeon carapace was droll, witty, at times daunting to the uninitiated (but not when you’d spent any time with him). ”I’m remembering the crusty guy, the gruff guy, whom no one was ever afraid of,” says John Ullyatt, who’s shared many a stage and a green room with Wright. “I’m remembering that same guy who giggled, sometimes at his own jokes, often with shared silliness.”

“He was such a titan,” says actor/director/playwright Belinda Cornish. “A simply magnificent actor and a hell of an inspiration, and, beneath his determinedly curmudgeonly exterior, just the kindest, warmest man. He was a no-bullshit kind of fellow, in the very best possible way.”

“His crusty exterior shrouded the most beautiful heart,” says James MacDonald, the first Freewill Shakespeare Festival artistic director and both a Wright director and cast-mate. “He cared so deeply for the theatre, for his fellow artists, for his friends, for the work, and for the audience. He was the most generous, honest, and soulful scene partner…. John Wright is the person who taught me to direct.”

The current Freewill artistic director Dave Horak echoes the thought. “John was indeed a bit terrifying, at first. He certainly played many characters that had a certain dark and ‘masculine’ energy. And yet once you pierced the exterior you found a real sweetie.”

The last of a distinguished Canadian theatre family that included his three sisters, Susan, Janet, and Anne, Wright came to Edmonton from his home town of Saskatoon. He’d been here before, touring with the Citadel On Wheels during the John Neville years in the 1970s (and had a supply of funny touring stories).

It was director Jim Guedo, a Wright friend and colleague of 48 years standing, who brought his fellow Saskatchewanian (along with Wright’s sister Susan) here in 1987 for his inaugural production as the new artistic director of Phoenix Theatre: Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind. The Phoenix repertoire leaned into the new, the raw-edged, the contemporary. It suited Wright’s particularly earthy, grounded intensity, and his go-for-the-gusto rapport with gritty dark comedy. And best actor Sterling Awards for such productions as Road and Sight Unseen would follow.

“The first show I saw John in was Persephone Theatre’s Cruel Tears in 1975,” says Guedo.” The premiere and cross-country tour of Ken Mitchell’s country/folk/trucker version of Othello, a Canadian theatre landmark as it turned out, was a Wright family affair; “John shared the stage with sisters Janet and Anne.”

“Arriving at the University of Saskatchewan in 1977,” says Guedo, “I watched from the wings and booth to see him play Alan Strang, the young boy in Equus. He directed me a year later in Play It Again Sam for our U of summer stock….” Their theatre history together includes eight shows in which they acted together, “and I directed him in 18, as well as designing five shows he appeared in.” Together Guedo and Wright did Shakespeare, Pinter, Mamet, and Shepard in Saskatoon.

And then came Edmonton. A Lie of the Mind at Phoenix was momentous for Edmonton theatre in more ways than one. It’s where Wright met and fell in love with Marianne Copithorne, the actor (then director, then artistic director of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival) who would become his wife. And Edmonton theatre would turn on its axis.

“John came back a season later to do Being At Home With Claude and Hurlyburly” at Phoenix, says Guedo, now a theatre prof at MacEwan University and artistic director of the indie company Wild Side Productions. “He stayed on in Edmonton, and the rest is Edmonton theatre history.”

John Wright, Shaoon Larson, Paul Morgan Donald, Daniel Arnold, John Kirkpatrick in Much Ado About Nothing, Freewill Shakespeare Festival 2000. Photo supplied.

That history would soon include Wright appearances at every company in town, including many at the Citadel — and notable summer excursions into the great outdoors in Freewill Shakespeare Festival productions where you can look characters in the eye in broad daylight. Which suited Wright just fine.

John Wright and Belinda Cornish in The Merchant of Venice, 2017. Photo by Ryan Parker.

Belinda Cornish remembers the experience of co-starring with Wright in Copithorne’s Freewill Shakespeare Festival production of Titus Andronicus in 2009. The weather, the ultra-violent play, the role, the whole thing was a bit overwhelming as she found one day in rehearsal. And she disappeared into the loo for a cry. When she emerged, Cornish recalls, “John looked at me with gruff concern and asked if something had happened. I told him I was fine, it had all just been a bit much. He nodded kindly, and said, ‘Yep, sometimes you just need to go and cry it all out’. Then he briskly patted my shoulder and said ‘just don’t do it on stage’. Fine advice from one of the finest, most generous, funniest and most deeply loved actors I have ever had the privilege to work with.”

John Wright and Ron Pederson in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Ryan Parker.

Ron Pederson says “I was in awe of John when I first saw him in those amazing Jim Guedo productions at the Phoenix…. He had an intimidating cool and intensity, and I was so nervous working with him the first time,” which happened at Workshop West in Marty Chan’s (spiky political satire) The Old Boys’ Club. “John had to strangle my weasley character to death at the end of Act 1. And the twinkle in his eye I’ll never forget.”

“He was a fun and sardonic curmudgeon backstage and (talking) about the business, but when he played he was mischievous and full of joy.”

Marianne Copithorne and John Wright in Macbeth, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo supplied.

Wright seemed to have a natural rapport with Shakespeare, witness his original performances in big roles — Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, Claudius the murderous usurper in Hamlet, Prospero in The Tempest, Shylock (twice) in The Merchant of Venice, Leontes the king undone by jealousy in The Winter’s Tale … “and all the dukes over the years,” as Ullyatt says.

Was it his natural, always intelligible, way with iambic pentameter? Was it his complete commitment to character? The sense that he conveyed of thinking on his feet in the immediate present?

All of the above. “I’m remembering John’s style of acting,” says Ullyatt. “He was never bombastic or overly musical; he didn’t push. It seemed effortless, but somehow you got every word that he said, every meaning. He understood it and felt it and shared it….”

Dave Horak and John Wright in King Lear, Freewill Shakespeare Festival 2013. Photo supplied

Horak, who played the Fool to Wright’s Lear (directed by Guedo) in his first Freewill show in 2013, was “fascinated with John’s ability to really pull that Shakespearean text ‘off the page’. He excelled at thinking through the words and you really believed he was making it up in the moment. There were times onstage when I forgot we were ‘acting’ and he forced me to really listen to him. He was unpredictable … totally committed to being completely present.”

Annette Loiselle and John Wright, Twelfth Night, Freewill Shakespeare Festival 1997. Photo supplied

“I know he sometimes suffered from stage fright and so I think it took a lot out of him to be onstage,” Horak says. “And I think he made a decision that if he was going to be there, it had better matter.” Ullyatt has a similar thought: Wright as “someone who, as mighty as he could be onstage, also seemed fragile of heart and soul.”

The great fight choreographer and director J.P. Fournier found himself unfailingly impressed by the actor’s charisma. As Burgoyne, the witty British general in Fournier’s U of A production of Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, “John would come on in the last 20 minutes, and he walked away with the show every night! In that, and so many productions, you couldn’t take your eyes off him” says Fournier. “You couldn’t not watch him! A fabulous actor.”

John Wright as Propero in The Tempest, Freewill Shakespeare Festival 2002. Photo supplied.

“Whenever he was onstage, I was hooked. Every time…. He never ‘acted’. He was SO in the moment.” And Wright was a great asset to the young actors of the company. “His suggestions were so casual, so full of depth.”

You had to love an artist whose outrage at the state of the world didn’t peter out. Wright devoted energy to exasperation, as well I know. In the last 38 years how many times did I hear him say, after a show or over an occasional barbecue in his magical garden, that he’d had it with theatre and the lack of real support from the culture? A dozen times? He didn’t need theatre, he’d done his last show, and he was thinking of retiring, going back into the family electrical business in Saskatoon to make a proper living instead. We were all so lucky for a long time that he didn’t actually do it.

As MacDonald says, “John and Marianne were such leaders together in our community…. We will truly never see his like again.”

A GoFundMe has been created to support John Wright’s wife Marianne Copithorne: https://tinyurl.com/499dbpe8.