About Tale Wagging Theatre

Tale Wagging Theatre Mandate

Tale Wagging Theatre is a not-for-profit company dedicated to producing quality Canadian productions and providing opportunities for new, emerging and established
artists in a professional theatre environment.

The Tale Wagging Theatre – Just the beginning

Tale Wagging Theatre was only recently formed. What great adventures and excitement lay ahead of us? Come along and see. Our premier performance will be at the 2010 Ottawa Fringe Festival.

Founder – John Cook

John Cook was born in Montreal in 1955 and shortly afterwards moved to Ottawa. He took his first acting lessons at the Ottawa Little Theatre at the age of ten. Struck by the smell of grease paint and dazzled by the spotlights, he dreamed of making theatre his life work.

However life, children and many moves across the country came first and it was not until one week before his fortieth birthday that he managed to get back on the stage as an Amateur Night stand-up comic at an Ottawa comedy club. It was also around that time that he started to write a humour column for a community newspaper. Sadly the call from the nightclub agents never came, so John reluctantly took his loyal fan’s advice to “put down the mike and stick to writing.” This proved to be the right move as since then, he has written humour columns for a computer magazine, a Christian newspaper and a other community paper.

His big acting break came when he joined Vintage Stock Theatre, a community theatre group in the east end of Ottawa and became a regular in their productions. He has been cast as a variety of characters however one of his more memorably roles involved wearing a tutu and tights during an Ottawa Theatre Challenge performance at the NAC’s fourth stage. “I did it for my craft,” he stoically recalls.

Knowing that writing was always his strong suit, John managed to convince Vintage Stock to let him write one of their murder-mystery plays. Catching them on a good day, they agreed and in August 2002, Portrait of Murder was performed at the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum to a sold-out audience.

Since then John has written or co-written a number of plays for Vintage Stock Theatre, two of which he has directed. East End Theatre, another Ottawa-based community theatre group, performed two of his one-act plays: The Roof Top Guy and The Three Hole Punch.

He has studied under Canadian actor, playwright and author Alan Stratton at Theatre Ontario workshops and was a board member of Vintage Stock Theatre for many years.