Riverbank Music Company is privileged to have an Artist with the kind of vast experience and background that Henry Woolf possesses to direct La Vie Parisienne. He froze in Finland for Gorky Park; was run over by Meatloaf's Harley in The Rocky Horror Picture Show; was blown up by accident in The Bed Sitting Room; nearly died eating chocolate covered snails during eighteen takes for The Lion In Winter; fell off his horse twelve times in Alfred The Great; and was bitten, off camera, by the Hound Of The Baskervilles.
Finally, as he so modestly put it, he learned joined up writing and became a professor.
Henry Woolf has acted and directed in London, Paris and New York. He directed the first production of the first Harold Pinter play, The Room, in 1957 and since then, between movies and his own BBC-TV show, Words And Pictures, which he presented for three years (1975-78), he found time to work for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court Theatre and in many West End productions. A highlight in 1966 was working with Laurence Olivier in Ionesco's Rhineroceros under the direction of Orson Welles.
Known as 'The King of the Avant Garde' in some theatrical journals and 'that attic and basement actor' in others, Henry premiered many English productions including playing Galy Gay in Brecht's Man Is Man, Kaspar in Peter Handke's play of the same name and the solitary man in Pinter's Monologue.
Coming to Canada in 1978 (after his wife gave up the National Theatre in London and Henry's own TV show for the fun of it), he won the Edmonton Critics best actor award in 1979 for his performance as the English comedian Tony Hancock in Hancock's Last Hour. In 1962 he popped back to the U.K. to play Dr. Cornelius in the B.B.C. T.V. Narnia series. In 1994 he was in London again acting in the world premiere of Patrick Suskind's play, The Pigeon.
He has acted and directed all over Canada and currently, in addition to his duties as Artistic Director of The Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan Festival, he is currently Head of the Department of Drama at the University of Saskatchewan.