In early August, 2006, playwright Hannah Moscovitch and multihyphenate theatre artist Mary Vingoe were standing in a parking lot near Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. They were soaked, huddling under umbrellas as a late summer storm hurtled through the city.
Mary Vingoe.Handout/James Arthur Maclean/Supplied
Ms. Moscovitch, not yet one of the most famous playwrights in Canada, couldn’t believe her ears. Surely, she’d misheard: Ms. Vingoe was going to program Ms. Moscovitch’s The Russian Play in a national festival?
“I couldn’t believe she meant it,” said Ms. Moscovitch, who added that prior to Ms. Vingoe’s support, she had considered abandoning the theatre industry entirely to attend law school. “But within a few weeks, I got an official letter from Magnetic North Theatre Festival. I was a young artist who had no track record, and she threw all the financial weight of the festival behind me. It was a huge, incredible risk.”
Ms. Vingoe died on July 18 at age 70 after a battle with multiple myeloma. Her work as a theatre artist – as a playwright, actor, director, dramaturg and administrator – shaped the Canadian performance landscape in large and small ways, from tiny line edits in new plays to sweeping programming choices that vaulted young artists to new levels of artistic success.
Ms. Vingoe, an officer of the Order of Canada, had a lengthy list of accomplishments, which included co-founding Nightwood Theatre, one of the oldest feminist theatre companies in the country, in 1979, as well as mentoring, programming and elevating new talent – including Ms. Moscovitch, now a Governor-General’s Award-winning playwright and screenwriter.
“Because of Mary, many, many more people were able to see The Russian Play and book it for their own theatres,” Ms. Moscovitch said. “She wasn’t trying to make it more palatable or more accessible, or conform it to some mandate. For her to just say, ‘It’s good, and should have a life of its own and be seen on a national stage,’ was huge for me.”
Mary Helen Vingoe was born in Halifax on May 12, 1955, to Helen (née Wooll) and Robert Vingoe. She spent most of her life in the theatre, creating and championing new Canadian plays across the country – but throughout her career, she held a soft spot for work by, for and about Atlantic Canadians.
A graduate of Dalhousie University and, later, the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, Ms. Vingoe had a passion for live performance that burned brightly across the country: In addition to Nightwood, she co-founded a number of theatrical institutions in Nova Scotia and beyond, including Eastern Front Theatre (1993), Magnetic North Theatre Festival (2002) and HomeFirst Theatre (2010).
In 1984, she co-founded Ship’s Company Theatre aboard the MV Kipawo, a decommissioned ferry in Parrsboro, N.S. Her daughter, Laura Vingoe-Cram, now serves as its artistic director.
Though Ms. Vingoe’s career was expansive, a common through-line was her emphasis on new plays by women. In a 2016 interview with R.H. Thomson for Canada’s Theatre Museum, she recalled Nightwood’s early years with some chagrin: A Toronto theatre leader nicknamed the company “Dykewood Theatre.” The joke stung, said Ms. Vingoe.
“It was like waterboarding,” she said. “What do you say to that? You don’t want to say it’s an insult – it wasn’t an insult in the sense that, you know, we could have been lesbians, but happened not to be. But it was this idea that we could be reduced to our sexuality.”
Ms. Vingoe said that sort of joke was “not uncommon” when the company was formed, and that over the years, those sorts of remarks became quieter. Misogyny in the theatre industry remained, but became less immediately visible on the surface.
“I’ve always been kind of an optimist,” said Ms. Vingoe of improvements in the theatre industry for women. “But it’s really a delicate situation.” Nightwood evolved to become a major Canadian theatre institution that continues to produce award-winning work today.
Stories about Ms. Vingoe from her friends are uncannily similar: More often than not, they start in a theatre, laughing over some play or industry gossip. On rare stints outside the rehearsal hall, Ms. Vingoe liked to take walks around her home in Nova Scotia, scheming and dreaming about new work in between warm cups of tea.
“We loved working together, and we raised our kids together,” said playwright Wendy Lill. “We often walked around the local lake together and talked out new scenes, and talked out our children. They were driving us crazy: our plays and our children. It was a ball. We had an amazing life together.”
Catherine Banks, another playwright, shared similar sentiments: Nothing was off-limits to discuss with Ms. Vingoe. Except for, maybe, incomplete drafts of new plays.
“I remember I sent her drafts and drafts of a first act,” Ms. Banks said. “And one day I got a letter back that said, ‘Do not send me this play until you send me a full draft.’ So I didn’t.” The two crossed paths several times over the years before becoming close a decade ago.
“She did everything with such a lovely spirit,” Ms. Banks said. “She might get angry, but never with any bitterness. She always wanted to keep things moving forward – companies, plays. She had that incredible gift of passion.”
Arts consultant Gay Hauser, co-founder of Eastern Front Theatre and another close friend with deep ties to the theatre industry, recalled meeting Ms. Vingoe in a clown improv class in 1978. They became fast pals in between outlandish acting exercises, she said.
“We could share our thoughts and feelings with each other easily,” she said. “And always, her children came first. There was never any question that her kids, and her husband – who she was very much in love with, and who passed too early – were her entire life.”
Indeed, alongside her vibrant career in Canadian theatre, Ms. Vingoe, herself a 2016 Governor-General’s Award finalist for her play Refuge, had a rich family life and many, many friends. Her beloved husband, musician and composer Paul Cram, died in 2018; her children, Laura and Kyle Vingoe-Cram, 33 and 37, respectively, said their parents managed Ms. Vingoe’s hectic schedule well, even when Ms. Vingoe spent weeks away from home for work.
“We never felt abandoned,” Ms. Vingoe-Cram said. “And after all, she was a feminist; she had this idea that, yes, even though she had two kids, she was going to pursue her career. I think that made her work harder, but she was a great mom. And she showed us that you can have kids and a career at the same time.”
Jillian Keiley, a prolific Canadian director and former artistic director of the National Arts Centre’s English Theatre in Ottawa, shared that sentiment: Ms. Vingoe was the model of a working mother, able to juggle responsibilities at a time when many female theatre makers felt they had to choose between their work and their families.
“I had a child very late,” Ms. Keiley said. “That was a deliberate choice – I had never thought that was in my future as a gigging director. But I remember I went to Mary, and told her I was thinking about doing this, and I asked her how she balanced it. I’ll never forget what she said: ‘Jill, your entire life is theatre. It’s so great to have something in your life that’s so much more important than that.’ She was right.”
In her final days, just a week before the birth of her second grandchild, Rowen, Ms. Vingoe was surrounded by friends and family. In the months leading up to her death, hordes of friends came to visit, dropping off coffee and other treats: “Mary’s Army,” her children called the well-wishers.
“She was so proud of the relationships she forged and all the mentorship she did,” Ms. Vingoe-Cram said. “There are so many people who were influenced by her, and she was proud of that. She was proud of her friendships, both artistic and otherwise. But above all, I know she was proud of us.”
Ms. Vingoe leaves her children; her brother, Ian; grandchildren, Rowen and Morgan; a large extended family and an even larger network of friends, colleagues and protégés.
