Sunday,
March 02, 2008
Tony Nardi- My
Hero - Stages His Rants
The
ANNOTICO Report
Tony
Nardi has more than a few beefs, but the way he deals
is by incorporating them into a series of plays he writes, directs,
and produces,
Letter
One, Letter Two, and Letter Three...and Counting.
His
first play/rant "Letter One" was
written in reaction to a script for the TV series Rent-a-Goalie, set in
It wasn't a
first. He could have shrugged it off with an, "I'm busy, no thanks,
I'll pass," as he had often done before. But this time he couldn't take it
anymore. He turned warrior.
"Where do
we take responsibility for the crap that we put out there on TV?" he asked, rhetorically,
over the phone. "Because we put out crap. I mean,
everybody agrees. Notwithstanding the phenomenal talent, we strive for
mediocrity." He wrote a lengthy diatribe and mailed it off to the
Rent-a-Goalie producers. No reply. He started emailing it to friends. Then he
developed it into a play, and began performing it for them.
"Letter
Two" His
next rant was set off by reviews of a commedia dell'arte
play, Carlo Goldoni's "The Amorous Servant", and his problem with critics: "They pass off ignorance
as knowledge of the art form."
If Nardi, 49, last seen at Centaur Theatre as Sky Masterson in
Guys and Dolls in 1988, were not an established actor with a couple of Genie awards (best actor
for La Diroute in 1999 and My Father's
Angel in 2001) to his name, his letters/plays might have become career
suicide notes. Instead, they have raised his profile and won him admiration.
Toronto Star
columnist Joe Fiorito wrote: "Nardi uses dramatic acid to burn the rust off truth, and to
blister complacency until it turns into awareness. He takes no prisoners."
A man of many rants
Tony
Nardi Stages His Tirades - Letters - on The State of
Pat Donnelly
Saturday, March 01, 2008
The thing I love
about cantankerous people is that you can get them started on just about
anything.
So when I called
actor Tony Nardi in
Sure enough, I
got a tirade on the deplorable state of snow removal in
Nardi, whom one
"Wherever I
see comic opportunities, I'm in," he admitted.
Enough
with the weather.
Exactly what is his main beef?
"The first
two letters were really specific reactions to specific things," he said.
The first was written in reaction to a script for the TV series Rent-a-Goalie,
set in
It wasn't a
first. He could have shrugged it off with an, "I'm busy, no thanks, I'll
pass," as he had often done before. But this time (fresh in from
"Where do we
take responsibility for the crap that we put out there on TV?" he asked,
rhetorically, over the phone. "Because we put out crap.
I mean, everybody agrees. Notwithstanding the phenomenal talent, we strive for
mediocrity."
Nardi, who began his
professional acting career in
That was Letter
One.
His next rant was
set off by negative reviews of a commedia dell'arte
play, Carlo Goldoni's The Amorous Servant, presented by Pleiades Theatre in
So he wrote a
"mammoth" essay addressed to two
The problem isn't
only the Italian, or French communities in
The essay became
Letter Two, his take on the Canadian theatre industry. And
once again, as with television, the label was mediocre, with gutless and
irrelevant thrown in.
According to Nardi, Canadian actors have been reduced to props, not
allowed to develop their own voices.
Nardi described his third play
"... And Counting!" as largely a post-mortem of the
two previous ones, with emphasis on the issue of cultural funding.
In
If Nardi, 49, last seen at Centaur Theatre as Sky Masterson in
Guys and Dolls in 1988, were not an established actor with a couple of Genie
awards (best actor for La Diroute in 1999 and My
Father's Angel in 2001) to his name, his letters might have become career
suicide notes. Instead, they have raised his profile and won him admiration.
Toronto Star
columnist Joe Fiorito wrote: "Nardi uses dramatic acid to burn the rust off truth, and to
blister complacency until it turns into awareness. He takes no prisoners."
Nardi breaks all the rules of
performance, too. He doesn't memorize his lines and he doesn't rehearse.
"I read it off the computer," he said. "I stand at a podium with
my laptop and read."
There's no
admission charge for the Letter plays. And after the show, members of the
audience get a chance to tell him off.
Theatre
critics, too.
Here's the catch: anything you say may end up in the next version of his
script.
Tony Nardi's Letter One, will be
presented Thursday at 6 p.m at UQAM's
Studio-d'essai Claude-Gauvreau,
Pavillon Judith-Jasmin,
second floor,
pdonnell@thegazette.canwest.com
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