Visual Arts   Literature   Music   Dance   Theatre  Film & New Media

John Stephen Hirsch

This article comes from the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia.

Director born in Siófok, Hungary in 1930, died in Toronto, Ontario , in 1989. His family lived in Endrod (today GyomaEndrod). His parents and brother died in the Holocaust. Hirsch, then 14, was hidden from the Nazis by a maid who took him to the Budapest Ghetto.

John Hirsch's theatrical impulses start early. After the war, he was in a UNRRA (refugee) camp in Aschau, Germany (1946). Together with his childhood friend, Marianne Bolgar (d. May 13, 2001, in Montreal), they produced The Snow Queen for the refugee children in the camp. Then, with the help of a cell of the Zionist Underground, he was part of a group of 175 Jewish orphans smuggled into Romania. From there he went to Greece, then Israel, before finally arriving in this country.

He arrived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1947, studied at the University of Manitoba and formed a children's company. In 1957, he co-founded, with Tom Hendry , Theatre 77 which, in 1958, joined with Winnipeg Little Theatre to become the country's first regional theatre, Manitoba Theatre Centre . Mr. Hirsch was the company's first artistic director.

He made his Stratford Festival debut, invited by Michael Langham, with The Cherry Orchard. He was associate director of the company from 1967-69 and head of CBC television drama from 1974-78.

His love-hate relationship with Stratford, its critics and audience reached a culmination point in 1980. After some disastrous shenanigans involving Stratford's board of directors and their choices for a new artistic director, Hirsch was invited to be the company's sole artistic director
from 1981-85.

Click on the two images above to view a larger format.

He directed at the National Arts Centre, Toronto Arts Productions, Young People's Theatre, the Shaw Festival as well as at Stratford (where his 1976 production of Chekhov's Three Sisters starring Marti Maraden, Martha Henry and Maggie Smith was breathtaking).

We thank the Stratford Festival Canada for the use of the above photographs.

He had also directed in the United States, winning an Obie, Outer Critics' and Los Angeles Drama Critics' Awards for his productions.

He was awarded the Order of Canada in 1967. He was one of the first high-profile Canadian artists to die of AIDS.

Mr. Hirsch's directing style was highly imaginative while also being text-driven. Though he often confronted the audience and the purists with his interpretations of a work's subtext (not to mention his prickly temperament), he was also always prepared to defend his choices.

John Hirsch with Bill Valgardson and Alexina Louie at the National Library in 1985.

 

 

 

 

 

Left to right: Bill Valgardson, Marco Micone, John Hirsch, Alexina Louie and Neil Bissoondath before a panel discussion on the role of artists in culturally diverse societies, National Library of Canada, 1985.

 

 

 

Home   *   About Us   *   Contact Us   *  News Archives   *   Site Map