Gryphon Gallery: Gina Wilkinson

April 14, 2022

Alumni

Stuart Brambley, Archivist Stuart Brambley, Archivist photo

Gina Wilkinson attended Glenlyon Norfolk School (Norfolk House) from 1973 to 1977, in her final year winning the Henderson Cup for Drama as “the most likely student capable of going on into theatre.”

Her first drama teacher was Judy Bradshaw—later Treloar. “Right from the first time I met her, I knew there was something special about her. She was determined, a strong person who certainly knew what she wanted to do, and she exceeded my expectations,” she said.

Wilkinson graduated from the National Theatre School in 1979 and made her debut at the Stratford Festival in 1983. Spurred on by an inconsiderate comment from a guest director, who stood at the back of the theatre and said: “Miss Wilkinson, why don’t you try stenography for a living?” Gina was soon to receive rave reviews for her next performance as Maria in Twelfth Night and her acting career took off.

Highly regarded by the critics for performances in Shakespearean comedy, most notably as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Gina also acted in fellow GNS’er Atom Egoyan’s blockbuster movie Ararat as the art teacher. She turned her talents to writing in the early 2000s and renowned theatre critic, Robert Cushman said: “She wrote two adventurous plays with lively, speakable scripts—My Mother’s Feet and Whistle Me Home, the latter a monologue in a bathtub, brilliantly performed by her husband-to-be, Tom Rooney.”

But it was as a director, with plays like Wide Awake Hearts, Faith Healer, Half an Hour, and Palmer Park that the world of Canadian theatre believed she found her true, creative calling, only to be cut short far too early from any further successes she was destined to have.

She sadly passed away from cancer in late 2020. Gina Wilkinson married Tom Rooney only days before her passing.

This is the sixteenth instalment of a series of articles entitled “Gryphon Gallery” created by our School Archivist that provide snapshots that celebrate the achievements of a variety of alumni and staff from throughout the history of GNS.