Former U of S prof never far from theatre
Releasing a new book one week and jetting to London to act in a play the next might tax the endurance of a 30-year-old. Henry Woolf, 87, took it in stride. It was a busy fall for the retired drama professor, whose public appearances are getting less frequent but more special. Woolf taught at the University of Saskatchewan from 1983 to 1997, inspiring a generation of actors. He was the artistic director of Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan from 1991 to 2001, famously pushing the Bard to the limit; he created a radical Much Ado About Nothing set in the world of insects and a hippie version of As You Like It in which a VW bus rolled on stage filled with pot smoke.
During that period, he brought to Saskatoon the North American premiere of Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes. The Pinter connection came honestly; Woolf and Pinter grew up together. In fact, Woolf persuaded Pinter to write his first play, The Room, which Woolf directed as a post-grad student at Bristol University.
Before academe, Woolf was a busy U.K. actor in theatre, film and television, trading lines with the likes of Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole and Glenda Jackson. Most recently, Woolf released his funny, charming memoir, Barcelona is in Trouble. In a Postmedia News interview, he indicated the book was far from a late-life decision.
“I started writing within three weeks of becoming an actor, as if some unconscious thing said, ‘Your life isn’t going to belong to you anymore. It’s going to belong to whoever hires you, and they’ll ask you to dress up in funny clothes and be anyone but yourself.’ “
He continued to act in “retirement,” in London and New York and even Saskatoon, appearing in Waiting for Godot in 2008 and The Caretaker in 2013 at Persephone Theatre.
The title of Woolf ’s memoir refers to an obsession he had as a child with the Spanish Civil War. The book lends insight into his unconventional childhood — growing up in poverty in London and enduring night after night of bombing in the Second World War.
Woolf and Susan Williamson met as castmates in the hit play The Marat/Sade, which ran in London and for five months on Broadway. One of his favourite stories is of telling an elderly woman in Saskatoon that he and his wife met “on Broadway.”
When the woman assumed he was talking about Broadway Avenue, Saskatoon, “I thought, this was the place I want to live,” he recalled thinking.
Woolf ’s book signing took place at Word on the Street, drawing a long lineup. Not long after, he was on his way to London for a Pinter-related project at the British Library, a staged reading of a play adapted by the son of one of the members of Pinter’s “Hackney Gang” from the old days. Woolf is the last surviving member of that gang.
Where Are They Now is a feature updating our audience on newsmakers from the past. If you have a suggestion for a subject, please email citydesk@theleaderpost.com or call 306-781-5300.