Adult Acting Instructors
AL Connors
As a full-time member of Ottawa's Shakespearean misfits 'A Company of Fools', AL has been a member of the professional theatre community since the turn of the century. His work as an instructor and producer with the Canadian Improv Games has had him working with youth from St. Johns to Victoria as well as running the Ottawa Regional and National Tournament at the National Arts Centre. Although his work primarily keeps him on stage, AL also dabbles in design and music and he will DJ your party if the price is right!
Bruce Bissonnette, Director of Adult Programs
Bruce is a Professional Actor, Director, and Teacher in the Performing Arts. He works for OSSD as our Director of Adult Programs/Summer Camp Director. We are thrilled that Bruce has taken on this position. Bruce oversees the Pre-Professional Program and helps to develop the curriculum and course content for all adult courses. He started his career in 1986 studying Acting at George Brown Theatre School and Directing at The Canadian Film Institute. His selected Directing credits include: Spider Juice, Work! Jobs in Progress, Our Town, The Duplex, 7 Stories, Blade and An Acre Of Time. His selected Acting credits include: Bordertown Cafe (Gryphon Theatre), Transit of Venus (Magnus Theatre), East of Elvis (Sudbury Theatre), The Mousetrap (Showboat Festival), Aladdin (Limelight Theatre), The Best Present (Carousel Players), Patria 1 (Canadian Opera Company). Bruce's Film and Television credits include: Jake and Phyllis (Canadian Film Centre), Street Legal (CBC), Kids in the Hall (Broadway Video), and Family Passions (CBC).
Ken Godmere
Ken studied improvisation in Toronto at The Second City with Allan Guttman and at Theatresports with Mark McKinney. He has been performing for over 30 years in more than one hundred stage, corporate video and television productions for companies including Stage Centre, Theatre 48, Invisions, Kevin Sullivan Productions, the New RO, and Mountain Road Productions. He also produced and directed a short independent film, The Fantom of the Firehall with Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie. His directing credits here in Ottawa include On The Spot Improv, Laff Lines, and Capital Indiscretions (The Institution); I Love You You’re Perfect Now Change – for which he earned the Capital Critics Circle award for best professional director, and The Last Five Years (Zucchini Grotto Theatre Company); and assisting Marti Maraden with Love’s Labour’s Lost (N.A.C.). Ken has been teaching in Ottawa for ten years including Improv workshops at The Institution; Theatre and English Communication courses at Educarium; and Open Acting, Improvisation, and Acting for the Camera at The Whitham School for the Performing Arts.
Danielle K.L. Grégoire
Danielle K.L. Grégoire is a teacher, drummer, radio host and spoken word poet. She began volunteering with the Capital Poetry Collective in October
2004 as the door girl, and is now the co-director. She can be found organizing Capital Slam, and delivering slam poetry workshops for youth.
Originally hailing from The Pas, Manitoba, Danielle is delighted to be a part of OSSD's teaching team and hoping to find a new pool of spoken word talent.
David Hersh
David is an actor, director, writer and teacher who has worked in the city for the past 12 years. He graduated from Concordia University with a Major in Theatre; Specialization Drama in Education. He was Artistic Director of the Orleans Young Players Theatre School for six years and continues to teach drama workshops in the schools with Salamander Theatre for Young Audiences. David has taught professionally for 16 years and in that time he has written more than 30 plays, directed more than 70 plays and produced over 150 plays for young people. He taught in the adult program at OSSD last year and worked with six to ten year olds this summer. David also performs with Salamander Theatre; he is in the touring show A World of Stories which tours elementary schools and he plays Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth for high school students. David directed and performed in the play What Goes Around… at this year’s Ottawa Fringe Festival. He has worked and performed with a Company of Fools, Third Wall Theatre Company, and the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival. David has written a play, entitled Jessica’s Monkey, that will be work-shopped by a Company of Fools and is creating an original theatre piece called The Well as a core member of The By the Well Collective. He has written and directed six short films and has worked with young people in-front of and behind the camera.
Barry Karp
Barry Karp began his acting career in Toronto with “The Studio Lab Theatre” over three decades ago. Since then he has conceived and produced a number of successful theatre training programs for young adults in Canada and the USA. He was the artistic director of The Studio Children’s Theatre which represented Canada at the Venice Biennale. And he has explored the creative aspects of conceiving, directing, writing and producing in the worlds of theatre, Native education and dance. More recently he has been heavily involved in directing the multidisciplinary works of R. Murray Schafer in Canada and Brazil.
John P. Kelly
John arrived in Canada from Ireland in 2004 and has already begun to establish himself in theatre here. He recently directed his first professional show in Ottawa, Eugene O’Brien’s hit play ‘Eden’ and his next ‘The Kings of the Kilburn High Road’ is scheduled for May. He has also adjudicated the Eastern Ontario One Act Finals and work shopped for groups both in the EODL and WODL areas. John is a freelance theatre director and course leader and, in a long and varied career, spent several years working for RTE, the Irish equivalent of CBC. For six years, he worked as a Radio Drama producer/director, before moving into management as Managing Editor of Features and Arts. He moved to Switzerland in 1994, where he worked for four years with the European Broadcasting Union as Head of Specialized Programming. He was a founder member of the Irish Association of Drama Adjudicators (ADA) and for a while a member of the British Guild of Drama Adjudicators and has worked in this capacity all over Ireland, including officiating at the Finals both in the Republic and in Ulster.
Peter Ryan
PETER RYAN has been involved in dance and theatre as a teacher, performer and writer since 1975. He has taught and performed across North America and Europe and was a founding member of EDAM, Vancouver's innovative dance and music collective. Currently, he teaches in the Theatre Department at the University of Ottawa, trains dancers and actors in improvisation for performance in Ottawa and Athens, Greece and teaches public classes in Improvisation at Ottawa's Dance Network. Peter also works extensively in the schools, teaching dance and movement. He is currently the Chair of Dance Ontario, has served on the board of the Council for the Arts in Ottawa, and was a member of the Arts Advisory Committee to the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
Maureen Smith
Maureen most recently appeared in the CanPlay production of Talking With. Additional selected credits include, Swollen Tongues, The Last Liberal, Feelgood Well (for NAC), The Comedy of Errors (St. Lawrence Shakespeare Co.), On the Verge Festivals (NAC,GCTC), and The Drowning Girls (Let it Land Theatre). Maureen holds a first degree black belt in Taekwon-do (ITF) and practices aerobics, and yoga. She is kept on her toes daily, and works to hone her skills of persuasion and patience through her children, Alison (4 years) and William (1 year). , The Forest and The Begats (for GCTC), Twelfth Night, and All’s Well that Ends
Patricia Tedford
Ms Tedford is an actor, director, producer and professional voice instructor. She currently teaches Acting for the Dept. of Theatre at The University of Ottawa,Voice and Speech for the new Musical Theatre Program at St. Lawrence College, and at The Ottawa School of Speech and Drama (Pre-Professional Program). Ms. Tedford holds an MFA in Acting and a Stand Alone Graduate Diploma in Voice Training from York University, in addition to an undergraduate in Theatre Performance from Concordia University.Patricia has performed in theatres in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto before coming to the Ottawa region. Within the Ottawa community she has been seen in productions of Marion Bridge (GCTC), Eleemosynary and Mrs. Dally Has A Lover (Ottawa Lunchbox Theatre), and directed Laundry and Bourbon (Ottawa Lunchbox Theatre) and The Conference Of The Birds (OSSD- Senior Company). She has also performed in various readings for the NAC.