After almost a decade's absence from live theatre, filmmaker, playwright and actor Don McKellar will make a surprise return to the Toronto stage next month, the Globe and Mail has learned.
McKellar, one of very few artists who can claim to be both a Genie- and Tony-award winner, will co-star with his partner Tracy Wright in a play called TTTTg (Triple Trooper Trevor Trumpet Girl) at the Theatre Centre from June 11 to June 13.
Created by Wright and Belgian artist Tine Van Aerschot, TTTTg takes the audience into "the wonderful, funny, original and slightly melancholy world of one Trevor Wells," according to press materials. Wright and McKellar will split the role of Trevor Wells in the show, which Wright premiered with a different actor in Brussels last year. It will be the Blindness screenwriter and Cooking with Stella star's first time acting on stage since he performed in his musical The Drowsy Chaperone during its 2001 run at Toronto's Winter Garden. (McKellar and co-writer Bob Martin, as well as lyricist and composers Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison all won Tonys for that show when it opened on Broadway in 2006.)
McKellar and Wright, who began their performing careers in theatre as co-founders (with director Daniel Brooks) of Toronto's Augusta Company in the 1980s, will also share a stage at the end of this month for a one-night fundraiser for the Actors' Fund of Canada at Convocation Hall.
Wright, whose film roles include Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know, will read the part of Galileo in a new translation of Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo presented by experimental theatre company Small Wooden Shoe. McKellar will be part of a starry supporting cast that includes fellow playwrights Ann-Marie MacDonald, Daniel MacIvor and Erin Shields. Full ticket information for both shows will be announced in the coming weeks.