Actress Tracy Wright in 2006.
Friends and loved ones of late Canadian actor Tracy Wright are taking a page straight out of her career to give her a proper remembrance.
In 1995, Wright helped create and perform 86: An Autopsy as part of The Augusta Company, which she had formed with Daniel Brooks and future husband Don McKellar. The stage was set as a storage room full of items from a dead woman's life, which the actors illuminated through the presentation of various objects.
At a memorial service to be held Monday, those close to Wright will present some of her personal artifacts to show "all of the different colours in her vastly talented life," as friend and film producer Jennifer Jonas puts it.
McKellar said the memorial will also feature film clips from Wright's career and that those presenting will include friends, family and fellow performers - as well as a member of Wright's Tae Kwon Do class (Wright had a black belt in the martial art).
"I hesitate to call it an experimental memorial but we're trying to do a memorial in keeping with Tracy's theatre work," McKellar said.
In her three-plus decades in the theatre, Wright was admired by the cultural community as an actor of substance, if a somewhat low-key star. She is best known for performing in stage shows such as Daniel MacIvor's A Beautiful View, television shows including Kids in the Hall and Twitch City, and films such as the 2006 comedy Monkey Warfare.
But before she died in June, aged 50, she also starred in two movies premiering at the forthcoming Toronto International Film Festival: You Are Here, a mind-bending philosophical puzzle directed by Daniel Cockburn, and Trigger, a tale of two reunited Canadian rock stars directed by Bruce McDonald and produced by Jonas and her partner Leonard Farlinger.
Trigger was pushed through hastily to allow Wright to star in it, alongside Molly Parker, before pancreatic cancer consumed her. Jonas and Farlinger put up some of their own money and many of those involved in making the film volunteered their time. All in all, it would seem an ideal curtain call for Wright, though McKellar deliberately scheduled the memorial in advance of TIFF to let people grieve before they see her last works.
"I know for a fact she wouldn't want the films to be seen as memorials. She wouldn't want the audience to see them with pity as their primary emotion," he said.
The memorial is open to the public and takes place at the University of Toronto's Hart House Theatre at 8 p.m. on Monday.
James Bradshaw