Rick McNair was a playwright, author, director, actor, storyteller, librettist, bibliophile, basketball player and coach. He was the former Director of Theatre Calgary

Theatre Calgary

Theatre Calgary, theatre company in Calgary, Alberta, established as a professional company in 1968.-History:The origin of the company dates back to the 1940s, when students of Betty Mitchell, a drama teacher at Calgary's Western Canada High School, established an amateur group known as "Workshop...

 and the Manitoba Theatre Centre

Manitoba Theatre Centre

Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre is Canada's oldest English-language regional theatre. Next to the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, MTC has a higher annual attendance than any other theatre in the country...

 and the founder of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia

Amherst, Nova Scotia

Amherst is a Canadian town in northwestern Cumberland County, Nova Scotia.Located at the northeast end of the Cumberland Basin, an arm of the Bay of Fundy, Amherst is strategically situated on the eastern boundary of the Tantramar Marshes 3 kilometres east of the interprovincial border with New...

, he died in Winnipeg, Manitoba on January 31, 2007.

Early years

McNair grew up in Sarnia, Ontario

Sarnia, Ontario

Sarnia is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada . It is the largest city on Lake Huron and is located where the upper Great Lakes empty into the St. Clair River....

 where he was very active in sports, in particular basketball and baseball. Upon graduation from college he began a teaching career that eventually led him into the theatre, and he formed a performance company known as the Harlequin Players.

Career

Although successful as a teacher and basketball coach, he was smitten by the theatre and in 1977 headed west and joined Theatre Calgary as the director of Caravan, which was a touring theatre troupe that traveled to schools throughout Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

. In 1979 Caravan was rebranded as Stage Coach Players and is known today as Quest Theatre. McNair's sojourn as Artistic Director at Theatre Calgary began in 1979 and was characterized by a particular emphasis on Canadian playwrights, commissioning works from writers such as Sharon Pollock

Sharon Pollock

Sharon Pollock is a Canadian playwright, actor, director, who lives in Calgary, Alberta. She has been Artistic Director of Theatre Calgary , Theatre New Brunswick and Performance Kitchen & The Garry Theatre, the latter which she herself founded in 1992. In 2007, she was made a Fellow of the Royal...

, John Murrell

John Murrell

John Murrell may refer to:*John Murrell , 19th century river bandit*John Murrell , 1990s author and playwright...

 and W.O. Mitchell among others.

From Theatre Calgary McNair moved to Winnipeg, where between 1986 and 1989 he was Director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre and where he continued to emphasize Canadian writers. McNair also founded the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in 1988 and was an active participant in many small venue productions as a writer, director and actor. His last production was as director of Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

's "After Magritte".

McNair explored many different performance media. In 2001 he penned the libretto of Turtle Wakes, a one-act opera for young people, with music by Allan Gordon Bell. This work was originally commissioned by the Calgary Opera

Calgary Opera

The Calgary Opera is a Canadian professional opera company in Calgary, Alberta, originally known as the Southern Alberta Opera Association. It performs in the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, accompanied by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and the Calgary Opera Chorus...

 in 2001, and it was toured to Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

 and Southern Alberta schools again in 2005. Over the years he gave many performances as a Story Teller, traveling to schools throughout Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

 as well as the Winnipeg Children's Festival, the Winnipeg Folk Festival

Winnipeg Folk Festival

The Winnipeg Folk Festival is a summer folk music festival held in Birds Hill Provincial Park, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It features a variety of folk artists from all around the world, as well as a number of local folk performers....

 and The Winnipeg Fringe Festival. His story telling experiences eventually led to the writing and publication of a children's book, The Last Unicorn of the Prairies, illustrated by Chris McVarish-Younger.

In addition to the many other backstage aspects of performing that McNair participated in, he was also a player and actor appearing in small parts in film and television. He appeared in many plays and his last role was as the Ghost of Christmas Present

Ghost of Christmas Present

The Ghost of Christmas Present is a character in one of the best-known works of the English novelist Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. The Spirit closely resembles Father Christmas from local folklore....

 in the 2005 Manitoba Theatre Centre production of A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...

.

Other contributions

McNair contributed to many aspects of the culture of Winnipeg, he and partner Richard Orlandini operated Borealis Books for many years, they were thoughtful bibliophiles who set the standard for a used book store in a city that is renowned for them. At the time of his passing McNair was the President of the Manitoba Association of Playwrights.

Works

Plays

Napi, The First Man

Beowulf!

Punch & Polly

Chagall

Dinosaurs

Dr. Barnardo's Pioneers (Theatre Calgary, 1978)

Hamlet - Who Cares? (Theatre Calgary 1979)

Ghost Town (Theatre Calgary, 1982)

To Far Away Places (Ship's Company Theatre 1989)

The Frank Slide - One Hundred Seconds

Global Village (2001)

Gulliver's Travels

A Life in the Movies (2001)

Merlin and Arthur

No More (2001)

Shoe Fly Blues (2002)

Sit Calm! (2001)

Merlin and Arthur (2004)

Libretto

Turtle Wakes (Calgary Opera 2001, 2005)

Children's Book

The Last Unicorn of the Prairieshttp://www.greatplains.mb.ca/?pageID=browse&titleID=28&imprintID=3

See also: List of Canadian writers, List of Canadian playwrights