Ensemble Bios

David Schurmann

David Schurmann returns for his thirtieth season at the Shaw Festival. This season, he is directing Present Laughter. Last season, he appeared as Lord Loam in J.M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton and as Domesday in Bernard Shaw’s On the Rocks.

Of the more than forty Shaw Festival productions in which David has appeared since 1981, audiences will recall his roles in Serious Money and John Bull’s Other Island in 2010, Noël Coward’s triplet Brief Encounters and as Billy Rice in John Osborne’s The Entertainer in 2009, Getting Married and The President in 2008, A Month in the Country and The Circle in 2007, The Invisible Man and The Crucible in 2006, You Never Can Tell and The Autumn Garden in 2005, Man and Superman and Harlequinade in 2004, Three Sisters and The Coronation Voyage in 2003, His Majesty and Hay Fever in 2002, The Millionairess and Fanny’s First Play in 2001, The Apple Cart in 2000 and Easy Virtue (both in 2000 and 1999), Heartbreak House in 1999, John Bull’s Other Island and Major Barbara in 1998, Mrs Warren’s Profession and The Two Mrs Carrolls in 1997, The Hollow and Shall We Join the Ladies? in 1996, Cavalcade and Waste in 1995, lead roles in Busman’s Honeymoon, This Happy Breed and Henry IV, The Front Page, Blithe Spirit, The Marrying of Ann Leete, Point Valaine, War and Peace, 1984 and the National Arts Centre tour of One for the Pot.

Other selected theatre credits include The Retreat from Moscow (Theatre Calgary); Holofernes in Love’s Labour’s Lost and Polonius in Hamlet (National Arts Centre); Rough Crossing (Geva Theatre, Rochester, NY); Tynan in Emphysema (A Love Story); playRites ’97 (Alberta Theatre Projects); One for the Pot (Royal Alexandra Theatre) and Tiger’s Heart (Great Canadian Theatre Company) — to name a few.

In his over forty years on stage, David has appeared in most major theatres across Canada including the Victoria’s Bastion Theatre, the Vancouver Playhouse, Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre and City Stage, Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon, Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Theatre London, Young Peoples Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Bathurst Street Theatre and Neptune Theatre in Halifax. He devised and directed The Way of Love, The Way of Strife for the Citadel Theatre and City Stage. He also directed the Canadian premiere of the critically acclaimed Bent and Moon for the Misbegotten (Manitoba Theatre Centre); Village Wooing and Chekhov’s The Proposal (Neptune Theatre); 18 Wheels (Persephone Theatre) and Prisoner of Second Avenue (StageWest, Winnipeg). Television credits include eleven episodes of A&E’s Nero Wolfe, Side Effects, Road to Avonlea and The Eleventh Hour.

Born in London, England, of a Dutch diplomat father and Canadian mother, David grew up in Holland, Thailand, South Africa and England. He was educated at Eton College and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, as well as the Actors Studio in New York. He knew at the age of sixteen that he wanted to become an actor and at nineteen he apprenticed at the Nottingham Playhouse. Following training at the Central School of Speech and Drama, he appeared in productions with the Mermaid Theatre, the Royal Court and the Atlas Theatre Group. When asked to recount a memorable theatre anecdote, David said, “Laurence Olivier has seen me on stage more times than I have seen him!” and noted that he met the great actor while Olivier was touring England looking for actors to join his company. Olivier saw him in the premiere of Osborne’s A Patriot for Me at the Royal Court and advised John Osborne that his scene should be cut due to the length of the play – Osborne refused “because of the actor playing the scene.”

In 1966, he came to Canada “seeking his roots.”