Gord Rand

Gord Rand grew up with two older brothers on a peach farm in Niagara on the Lake. His parents were both scientists. He owned a 300 pound pet pig named Percy who regularly escaped his pen to torment the neighbourhood dogs. He studied at the University of Toronto under Ken Gass, Dean Gilmour, Marc Christmann, and Herbert Olshok. After performing a guerrilla theatre production of Michael Hollingsworth's play Strawberry Fields - in an actual field, at dawn, lit by car headlights - he scored a gig at the acclaimed Shaw Festival Theatre where he worked for seven seasons, graduating from spear-carrier to lead. Notable roles included: Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World and Dick Dudgeon in The Devil's Disciple. When he left the Shaw in 1999 he took an overnight bus to Manhattan and won a role in the American Premiere of Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, working with Stoppard, Carey Perloff and James Cromwell in San Francisco. He also toured to Edinburgh, New York and Kigali, playing the lead role in Volcano Theatre's production of Michael Redhill's play Goodness. He made an award-winning documentary of the experience called Goodness in Rwanda. He won a Dora award in 2006 for his portrayal of Uri, a naked Ukrainian plutonium dealer in Michael Healey's The Innocent Eye Test. Other notable theatre roles included the title role in Hamlet for World Stage and the title role in Oedipus Rex at the Stratford Festival. He has authored several plays, all of which are dark comedies: Orgy in the Lighthouse, Pond Life, The Trial of Thumbelina, and The Trouble with Mr Adams - the last one directed by Obie award winner Lisa Peterson at The Tarragon Theatre. His plays tend to wildly divide audiences and critics. "Better angry than bored..." is a quote attributed to him. In 2017 he made Pond Life into a feature film. Though Gord works around the continent, he is based in Toronto, where he lives with his wife Jeanie Calleja and his two sons.