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Jim DeFelice and Bradley Moss in Possible Worlds, 1993. Photo by Ed Ellis.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

With the passing in October of Jim DeFelice, at 87, a multi-talented theatre artist and a true theatre community mentor are, at one blow, gone from us. Without him this theatre town of ours seems a little flatter, a little darker, a little thinner in texture.  

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And if a certain incredulity attaches to the heartbreaking news of his departure, it’s partly because DeFelice lived in such an expansive, multi-dimensional way — as a do-er and an appreciator, a teacher and a human connector. And (as tributes from across the country confirm) as a friend, loyal and steadfast, ever curious, ever generous about sharing his encyclopedic theatre knowledge, his stories, his enthusiasm.

There was nothing Ivory Tower about DeFelice, a U of A drama professor for three decades till he retired in 2002. He acted on stage and screen, he directed, he dramaturged new plays, he wrote his own. He wrote screenplays, too, like the 1977 award-winner Why Shoot The Teacher and episodes of Wind At My Back. He helped launch theatre companies, Shadow Theatre among them. and sat on theatre boards, Shadow, Workshop West, and Northern Light Theatre among them. He went to Oilers games and the opera (and had views on both); he went on birding expeditions; he played poker and studied horse racing forms. Six years ago, he tried his hand at improv, in Coyote Comedy at Grindstone, and was by all reports, a natural, and an audience fave.

Jim DeFelice as Pinchwife, with Janet-Laine Greene, in The Country Wife, Studio Theatre 1974. Photo by Ed Ellis.

And as his former students have attested, DeFelice followed their careers, in meaningful, personal ways. He was in the audience for their opening nights; he sent them messages, newspaper and magazine clippings, old programs he’d saved from a lifetime collection. He connected them with ideas, and with other artists. And when they took their theatre skills into other lines of work, he followed those, too.

It was a DeFelice specialty, a sort of graceful un-pushy mind expansion. And we were all (even theatre reviewers!) the beneficiaries. In your snail-mail box, you’d find big brown envelopes from him every once in a while, with notes clipped to them. I remember getting a copy of Arthur Miller’s The Archbishop’s Ceiling, a play I’d never heard of, with a Jim note saying he just thought I’d be interested in it. That’s how I learned about the byways of the Sam Shepard canon, too. Like his Boston accent, the big brown envelope was, it turned out, a DeFelice signature, theatre community-wide.

Jim DeFelice in Closer and Closer Apart. Photo supplied.

There is nothing predictable about DeFelice’s route from his little seaside home town of Lynn, Mass. (a 45-minute Blue Line bus ride from central Boston) to Edmonton — except that theatre was always part of it. Lynn was full of Italian immigrants like DeFelice’s parents, many of them in the shoe industry. Blue collar union supporters, yes, and “they loved the arts,” says Amy, DeFelice’s theatre director daughter, who visited Lynn every summer with her sister Gwen and her mother Gail, till she was 18. “And since my dad was very much the youngest of the six kids, his parents had time for him…. His mom, who loved music and theatre, took him to live game shows, and plays, in New York. He was the kid who got to go.”

Here’s a surprise: DeFelice’s undergrad degree from Northeastern in Boston was in journalism, and he became a sports writer with the Boston Globe. “He loved sports,” says Amy, the artistic director of Trunk Theatre (which, like her father, has provided Edmonton with so many discoveries from the contemporary repertoire). “He played basketball really well; he did track…. At the same time he was writing plays, and acting, too.”

With the Theatre Company of Boston, where Faye Dunaway and Stacy Keach were in the ensemble, DeFelice acted in Edward Albee plays, and dived into the Euro repertoire too. By the time he got to grad school at the University of Indiana, where he met Gail, an English and journalism major with a matching Massachusetts accent, he’d left journalism for theatre.

In 1969, the couple both got hired by the U of A on a year’s contract, then moved back east (DeFelice had a teaching gig at Rutgers in New Jersey). By 1972 the DeFelices were back here. “My dad always said they were very happy to have made a life in Canada,” says Amy, who grew up in a family whose group activity was “attending plays and concerts” and “divvying up the parts to read a play that dad was thinking of directing with his students.”

DeFelice’s was an auspicious arrival for this theatre town, and the ripple effects are still being felt. Shadow Theatre was founded by two of DeFelice’s U of A theatre students, John Hudson and Shaun Johnston. When Shadow made its debut, with Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, DeFelice played the Old Man observer, alongside Johnston and Lindsay Burns. Next up, DeFelice directed Shadow’s How I Got That Story.

Says Hudson, “Jim’s support and encouragement were so important…. He sat on our board for five years; he acted for us; he directed for us (his Shadow productions included  The Weir, The Baltimore Waltz, Underneath The Lintel). “My dad thought it was not right for him to be a teacher if he wasn’t also doing,” says Amy.

The DeFelice directing style was positive and encouraging, says Hudson, “gently leading, and so knowledgeable.” And it encouraged the actors’ own individuality and discoveries. “You never heard a nasty word from him.” The only times a fiery DeFelice temper showed up were moments when actors weren’t respecting each other in rehearsal, says Stephen Heatley, a U of A directing grad who became Theatre Network artistic director (current TN a.d. Bradley Moss is also a DeFelice directing mentee). In this Heatley echoes Amy, who occasionally stage-managed her dad’s productions.

Collin Doyle (The Mighty Carlins, Let The Light of Day Through) says “my experience as a playwright working with Jim as a director was him calmly and methodically working the script. He wanted everyone in the room to understand the story, to be grounded in the story. And that’s what I always saw in the productions he directed: the actors were grounded; they were listening to the other actors. They were breathing. They were in the moment and living on the stage. Because of Jim, the actors trusted the play….”

“I think Jim’s best quality as a human and as a director,” says Doyle, “was he cared deeply about everyone, he was always kind, and he was always curious.”

DeFelice’s knowledge was vast; it encompassed Irish, British, American, Canadian theatre. “He took us back to French Canadian theatre,” says Heatley. He remembers that when he chose Michel Tremblay’s Bonjour, La, Bonjour as his master’s degree finale, “Jim gave me a file folder of clippings,” along with the inspiration of the original production directed by Quebec star André Brassard. Afterward, says Heatley, “he invited me to be in his production of The Hostage,” alongside heavy-hitters like Paul Gross. “Jim led quite a relaxed, exploratory kind of rehearsal…. he was an inspiring mind to be around.”

Jim DeFelice at The Upper Crust c. 2008. Photo by Gerry Potter

Gerry Potter, the founder and first artistic director of Workshop West in 1978, remembers arriving here from Ottawa, by train, to study directing and get an MFA at the U of A. His first sight of Edmonton was “dark and scary and industrial,” and he spent his first night in the single men’s hostel. And then he met DeFelice, and his world got a lot brighter.

“He was a walking encyclopedia,” says Potter, who remembers DeFelice going to bat for him with the drama department bureaucracy. . “He seemed to know everyone, and he made connections for you.” Like every theatre artist in town Potter talks about the envelopes of clippings that came his way. Kate Ryan, one of DeFelice’s BFA acting students and now a director and artistic director (Plain Jane Theatre), remembers the clippings too. “He had an electric energy…. Theatre for him was about celebrating people. He cared about their history, where they came from, what they wrote and why.”

“A very kind man. And a fierce defender of his students, and the artists in the community. He was a busy man; he supported all of us,” says Potter. “Eventually, he became one of my closest friends, and a lot of people felt the same…. I’d (post) a picture of Jim and me having coffee at Spinelli’s. And I’d get 250 comments from people who loved him.”

Jim DeFelice in Jake’s Gate, by and directed by Gerry Potter. Photo supplied by Gerry Potter.

DeFelice was in Potter’s his first 16 mm film Jake’s Gate. “The character was loosely based on my father, and Jim attacked with such passion and intensity. He brought huge depth to it.”

By 2023, DeFelice’s health was failing. But he acted in the Collider Festival reading of Collin Doyle’s play The Takeoff at the Citadel. “While Jim did not feel he was at his best, I saw him give a wonderful, heartfelt performance that I thought was perfect,” says Doyle. DeFelice’s last theatrical outings, at last summer’s Fringe, a festival where he’d worked on more than 20 productions, were Doyle’s play-turned-musical Let The Light Of Day Through, and Sebastian Ley’s 638 Ways To Kill Castro.

DeFelice’s support of Canadian theatre was both wide, and particular. When the New York Times wrote, in the ‘80s, that there wasn’t much going on in Canadian theatre, he immediately wrote a letter to the editor (published) dismissing the dismissal. Although DeFelice would never have said so, he was his own best evidence.