Former actor turned history PhD grad now oversees WebCT courses at Guelph
BY REBECCA KENDALL
Growing up in Etobicoke, Richard Gorrie attended a high school that was banned from the Stratford Festival Theatre after trip organizers became fed up with the disruptive behaviour of class after class who clearly didn't appreciate Shakespeare.
“Kids would throw stink bombs down the aisles and play stupid pranks to distract the actors,” says Gorrie. “They were pretty bad.”
How ironic, then, that only a few years later, he would develop a passion for theatre and devote much of his life to the stage. Gorrie, who now works for the University as courseware services manager for Teaching Support Services, says the drama bug hit him hard.
“I started working in the theatre when all you needed was the willingness and the ability to stay up 23 hours a day.”
He began working at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre and later honed his craft as a member of the NDWT Company. He was part of the original Donnelly Trilogy and says he was honoured to work with renowned Canadian writer James Reaney.
At one point, the theatre literally became Gorrie's home. “I actually lived in the theatre for about six months in the sound booth or on the stage when there was a bed on set,” he says.
But satisfying as his work in the theatre was, he felt something was missing. After performing as a variety of characters on stage, he wanted to tackle a new role in academia.
Gorrie left Ontario to go west and enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan to study history. “I've always enjoyed learning,” he says.
With his feet planted firmly in campus life, he pursued both of his passions simultaneously and went on to complete his BA and MA while performing at a number of theatres in Saskatoon.
He was prompted to shift his focus from performer to creator after reading a history textbook that described Machiavelli, a 16th-century Italian statesman and philosopher, and his criticism of freelance mercenaries known as condotierri. Gorrie had been working with University of Saskatchewan professor Michael Hayden on an extension course that was being broadcast from the campus television studio, and the Machiavelli reference gave Gorrie the idea to create a docudrama to enhance the students' comprehension of the topics under discussion. Titled Condotierri Exposé, it took the form of an investigative TV news report and later earned him two awards.
Based on that docudrama, he then created a series of 24 shorter historical vignettes that were used weekly throughout the extension course. The episodes would characteristically interrupt lectures at key points and even included the occasional live animal from the university's veterinary college.
“It was great for students because they could see history come alive and actually watch their professor interact with the past,” says Gorrie.
In 1992, he came to U of G to pursue a PhD with Prof. Donna Andrew, doing research on 18th-century theatre riots. He says he found the campus to be fertile with inspiration and potential. He worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of History and, in 1995, won the Class of OAC '60 Award for Outstanding TA. That same year, he worked with now retired history professor Gil Stelter and graduate student James Calnan to create one of the Internet's first extensive hybrid courses, a face-to-face honours seminar with a significant online component.
“We put all the course materials online, including illustrated lectures, an extensive bibliography, research papers and an interactive map,” says Gorrie. “We used e-mail to connect students with Gil's urban history colleagues around the world, and the students turned their final major papers into web presentations.”
Those early beginnings led Gorrie to his current role, in which he oversees more than 1,200 WebCT courses. WebCT is an Internet-based educational software program that integrates everything from quizzes and virtual labs to conferencing systems and an online gradebook in a password-protected environment.
He credits much of what he's already accomplished and where he is now to being in the right place and meeting the right people at the right time. Even as an actor, he visited numerous university campuses and says he loves what the university atmosphere has to offer.
“It ranges from the sacred to the profane. On the one hand, there's a certain nobility in the pursuit of knowledge. This is where great minds come to research and then share that knowledge through writing and teaching. On the other hand, there's life in its most vibrant form. You see people at such a key stage of their life, full of energy and vision. There's an awesome vitality there, and the meeting of those two realms can have some really powerful effects. The opportunity one can find at a university for inspiration, communication, networking and sharing is incredible. For me, it has worked out well.”
Gorrie's fascination with history follows him home to the hamlet of Damascus, where he lives in a former Methodist church built in 1896.
“The sanctuary is still in its open and untouched form,” he says. “There are no pews, but you can see their outlines, almost like shadows, where they would have been at one point. Otherwise, it's preserved. The original stained-glass windows are there with their wonderful Methodist iconography.”
He says one of the most interesting aspects of his home's history is that it was once used as rehearsal space for the Juno Award-winning rock band Lighthouse. One of the church's former owners was Don DiNovo, a music producer who used the space for band practices and later as a recording studio for classical music.
Gorrie and his wife, Wendy, bought the church, which boasts a 25-foot ceiling, in 2001. He uses the upper balcony as his office.
“It's an inspiring writing space,” says Gorrie, who continues to pen scripts and do video production projects in his spare time. “I've even got a couple of feature films up there,” he says, tapping his temple with his finger.
