Interview of the Month – Tony McCleane Fay, Artistic Director GSA Cork
Monday, February 2nd, 2015 at 10:59 am | News & Events
Tony McCleane Fay is the Artistic Director at the Granary Theatre and has been heading up the Gaiety School of Acting operation in Cork since September 2012. He has been with the Granary Theatre since 2003. He has an MA in Drama & Theatre Studies, Theatre and Performance from UCC and is a Board Member of National Association of Youth Drama. Tony teaches both our Performance Theatre Company and our Youth Theatre Companies in Cork.
1. Did you always want to work in the film/acting business?
Yes. Growing up in Dublin in the ’70’s and growing up in London in the ’80’s I was surrounded by theatre.
2. Where did you train and how has your training influenced your approach to teaching?
Initially my training was vocational, on the job as I entered the business as an untrained actor and gradually moved through pretty much every job in theatre until I became a director. This was in the U.K. in the 1980’s when you could actually do that and be paid for it!! It was only later on that I studied in Middlesex University, where I got a professional post-grad degree in Performance Art and the onto a MA in Theatre Studies. I think the training that was most useful to me now was actually working with great directors and seeing how they worked with the text, with actors, with egos! That said, my training in Grotowski’s methods is something I use every day.
3. Any tips for aspiring actors/film makers in the Cork area?
Get to know the movers and shakers; sign up for a course with recognised accredited professionals who produce results; start a theatre company and bang down the doors of the Granary and Theatre Development Centre and get your work seen in open, experimental places like those; ask film people can you shadow them on their next shoot.
4. What do you like most about working with The Gaiety School of Acting?
First and foremost it’s working with the students, seeing them progress from Introduction to Drama up to Performance Theatre Company and beyond. The pathways are really well thought out in Gaiety School, there is always another course starting up which progresses your training, whether you’re a child, teenager or an adult.
5. Favourite actor(s)?
I tend to have favourite directors rather than actors; Robert Wilson for his visionary works, Romeo Castellucci for his iconoclastic productions and Simon McBurney of Theatre de Complicite.
6. Favourite playwright?
Caryl Churchill, because she is always playing with the form.
7. Favourite play?
‘Hamlet’ – no other play can touch it. I’ve directed it, and versions of it, four times.
8. Who has been the most influential person in your life so far?
Personally – my dear long suffering wife, Monika!
Professionally – It’s funny, but I don’t really lionise people. I have been influenced in various ways by past and current colleagues, but there is no ‘one person’ in the industry that I could say really influenced me to a degree that I would name them.
9. Earliest memory?
Being on the receiving end of a rock thrown at me by a school friend and going home, my face awash with blood, to my mother who fainted.
10. What would be your idea of the perfect day?
A lie-in, followed by a nice breakfast and then and day at Inch beach with my family and dog, then back home to a roaring fire and a nice bottle of red wine.
