Bill Glassco, the founder of Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, died Monday of throat cancer. He was 69.
Glassco helped foster the Canadian dramatic tradition and was a major figure in the "second wave" of Canadian theater in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Tuesday.
"He was a classic gentleman," director Chris Abraham said. "He was very curious about what the new generation of directors and writers were doing."
The two co-founded the Montreal Young Company in 1999, a theater troupe that employs new graduates from Canadian professional theater schools.
Glassco, was born in 1935 in Quebec City, Quebec, studied at Princeton and Oxford and taught English at the University of Toronto. He studied acting in New York City, but returned to Canada in 1969. He later founded Toronto's Tarragon Theater and was artistic director of David Freeman's Creeps.
He became artistic director of CentreStage. In 1988, Glassco's troupe merged with the Toronto Free Theatre to become CanStage. He also directed productions at the Stratford and Shaw festivals as well as on Broadway.
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