About Paul Rapsey

Having found his stage feet in high school at Ridley College, St. Catharines, during the 1960s, Paul continued to explore his love of theatre while attending Glendon College in the 1970 production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and in the Poor Alex Theatre productions of "Home Free" (Lanford Wilson) and the children's show, Winnie the Pooh. 

After that he transferred to the Fine Arts theatre and dance programme at York University, performing in the musical "Oh What a Lovely War" and once again in "Home Free". He spent the summer of 1972 at the Orillia Playhouse doing summer stock theatre including "The Drunkard" (Smith) and "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town" (Leacock) as well as various children's shows. 

After a period of travel overseas, Paul joined the Land of the Young children's theatre company in Ottawa in 1975-6. 

In 1977, Paul attended the Canadian Mime Theatre School in Niagara-on-the-Lake and joined the Canadian Mime Theatre Company for its 1978 season, writing many of the vignettes himself. 

Following that, he was invited by Tom Sokolowski of the Autumn Leaf Theatre Company to perform in Ionesco's "The Chairs" which ran both in Niagara-on-the-Lake and at the Factory Theatre Lab in Toronto in the fall of 1978. 

In 1979, Paul became a Journeyman at the Stratford Festival Theatre for its 1979 season performing in four of Shakespeare's plays.  Paul performed in the Spring 1980 Rhubarb Festival of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in a three person play titled "Ah, But it Sings, But it Sings, Luveena".

In 1980, Paul received a Canada Council grant to study with teachers from the Peter Brook School of Theatre, taking on the role of Macbeth. This he loved and considers a high point in his theatre career. At this juncture, Paul was turning thirty and decided that the uncertainty of life in the theatre was not for him. He returned to university that year in Political Science and ultimately decided on a career in law, entering law school in 1982.

Paul then felt that his attention and energy had to be on school, the AIDS crisis which had raised its ugly head, and social activism. He devoted his full energy as a social justice lawyer without regard for acting, other than in a legal sense, until his retirement. There were however, some dalliances during this time with the theatre world. In 1990, Paul wrote and performed a monologue, "One Voice" as a benefit for the Peterborough AIDS Resource Network, of which he was a founding member and its first Chair. Although he was asked to take this one the road, his busy legal career precluded this.

Shortly after moving from the City to the country in 1994, Paul was invited to perform in a community theatre murder mystery. He did so in 1995 as a demonstration of involvement in his new world. However, he discovered that this type of theatre did not engage him or his talent. He did not pursue further involvement.

However, in 2002, he was invited to play the role of Cratchet in a musical production of Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" at the Westben Arts Festival Theatre in Campbellford, Ontario. He quite enjoyed this theatrical dalliance. 

Then in 2004, he met three other former professional actors who currently had other careers, like himself. They decided to work together on challenging scripts in a company they would call The Village Theatre. From 2005 to 2008, they produced and performed in productions by Pinter, Lanford Wilson, Chekhov and Lee Blessing. Unfortunately, other time commitments (family and paid employment) took precedence to this undertaking and the group disbanded.

When Paul retired from his legal career in 2015, he decided he needed to keep his mind alive. He would undertake to learn, not necessarily perform, various monologues, if he could find ones he liked. His first undertaking was a brilliant script he had set his eyes on almost thirty years previously: Alan Bennett's wonderful monologue "Bed Among the Lentils". This play quickly came alive for Paul and he decided to perform it as a Benefit for the local Arts and Heritage Centre. This production in 2016 received great acclaim from audiences in various localities in Ontario, Nova Scotia and England.

In 2017, he performed the full length monologue, "The Importance of Being Oscar", by Micheal mac Liammoir at several venues. He played multiple characters in the life of Oscar Wilde.  

After having difficulty getting the rights to perform another Alan Bennett script in 2018, he decided to write his own monologue. This has now been performed multiple times to great acclaim: "The Lace". This is the story of an ageing professional feeling nudged out by younger co-workers.

This was followed by a further monologue, "Fiddelity", which he started in the late fall of 2019. He worked on the script through the winter of 2020. This is the story of a fiddle and the lives affected by it over several generations in one Cape Breton family. Although he had hoped to perform it on stage during the spring and summer of 2020, that was precluded by the restrictions imposed on live performances by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Considering these to be quasi-wartime conditions, he thought of World War II radio plays and an audio production came about. He undertook his first Podcast using his less than professional laptop voice recorder. The aim was to raise money for preforming artists in his home province of Nova Scotia whose careers had been negatively affected by the Covid-19 restrictions. This was before government funding kicked in. The reviews were very favourable: The Granville Ferry Podcast.

Over the summer of 2020, voices of several characters referred to in the original "Fiddelity" monologue, begged to be heard. An expanded script evolved and was workshopped in September 2020.

As Covid restrictions remained, and the future of live performances continued to be uncertain, it was suggested to him that he undertake a stage to screen project. Paul took up the challenge with virtually no budget and very limited equipment. It is now a 90-minute feature film. No one was more surprised than he was when the film was jury-selected for the Montreal Independent Film Festival - blemishes and all! It advanced as a "Semi-Finalist" in that festival. Subsequently it was an "Exceptional Merit Award" winner in the 2020 LGBTQ Unbordered International Film Festival. The film was shown at independent festivals in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America.

Movie trailer:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7dmpNuhAnQ.

In 2021, Paul wrote another monologue entitled "One's Company". He describes this as a "whimsical drama set in the time of Covid. He performed this to a small audience in Ontario in the summer of 2021 and again as a fundraiser in his home village of Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia in September of 2021. He produced a film version of this play in the fall of 2021 and submitted it to a few independent film festivals for consideration. The film won two awards: 1. Best Film in the Covid-19 category and an Exceptional Merit Award for a low budget film.

He had hoped to perform the original stage version of "Fiddelity" in 2022; however he then wrote a new script, which he completed in early 2022 titled "Desperately Seeking Samuel". This is the story of an elderly man who has lost the memory of his life. While trapped in a small space one night, over the course of several hours, he pieces it together, rediscovering his self-esteem. Paul describes this as a road trip of discovery. He made a film version and performed this play live with a modified script several times in both Ontario and laterly in Nova Scotia. 

In March 2023, Paul premiered his play, a 45 minute monologue titled "What's in a Name". This he describes as a whimsical by poignant bus trip down the character's memory lane as he travels from Ontario to Nova Scotia in search of a new beginning. The premiere was a benefit performance for the restoration of an historic lighthouse in Nova Scotia. A film version of this play was released later that year.

In early 2024, Paul wrote another play titled "The Little Wooden House". This too is a monologue. The play will premiere in May 2024 as a benefit for the Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens. For this production Paul will team up with an amazing gutarist, Alec Frith. Alec will perform original works during the filmed introduction and between the five scenes. A filmed version of the play will be released later in 2024.

Paul much prefers live performance to film. He feels that an actor has to feed off the energy of a live audience. It is a symbiotic relationship involving playwright, actor and audience.

Also, his "no budget" films, made with only the most basic equipment and whatever props he has at hand, have no suitable category for talking head monologues in most independent film festivals. He laughed when he discovered a "no budget film" category was for films with a budget of under $25,000.

Paul's performances have raised thousands of dollars for various non-profit and charitable causes in both Ontario and Nova Scotia. He sees it as a way to give back to the wider community.

And so it goes. As long as he can find or write interesting monologues, he will continue, so long as he is able, to work on them. 

However, in 2019, as his 70th birthday approached, Paul took up the fiddle with great enthusiasm. Due to travel and covid intervention, he has basically been self-taught. So he claims to now play about 60 tunes badly.

And in 2022, Paul wrote his first novel. This is a whimsical murder mystery titled "Murder on the Pony Express Way". This book and a compilation of five of his monologues "Five Monologues" were published in early 2023. Since then his second novel, "Murder Buy Cheeses"  was published in late 2023. And in 2024, his third novel, "The Listing Lighthouse" was published. Each of these stories is set in a sleepy Nova Scotia village.

This is keeping him busy enough.