Richard Jean Monette CM, DHum, LLD, was a Canadian actor and director, best known for his 14-season tenure as the longest-serving artistic director of the Stratford Festival of Canada from 1994 to 2007.
10 Facts About Richard Monette
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Richard Monette was educated at Loyola High School and Loyola College.
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Richard Monette joined the Stratford Festival Company in 1965, and played a variety of small roles.
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Richard Monette won a role in Soldiers at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, a production that took him to Broadway.
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Richard Monette appeared in a number of television plays on CBC.
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Richard Monette returned to the Stratford Company, taking on the role of Hamlet, and for the next ten years, he would be one of Stratford's main leading men.
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Richard Monette appeared in a number of Canadian films, including I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and Dancing in the Dark.
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Critic Richard Ouzounian believes this production served as a foundation for Monette's career as a director, calling it "a joyous romp in which the Fellinesque setting of Rome in the 1950s meshed marvelously with Shakespeare's text and the performances of Goldie Semple and Colm Feore".
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Richard Monette was selected as Artistic Director Designate of Stratford in 1992, and subsequently named artistic director in 1994.
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Richard Monette continued to take on occasional acting roles; in 1996, he appeared in the TV movie And Then There was One.