Tony Torn
Tony Torn is an actor and director with over a hundred professional credits in film, television and theater, most recently as JG Connell Sr in Emursive’s Life & Trust, Lear/Oswald in in King Lear, directed by Karin Coonrod, and Henry in Mabou Mines’ Mud/Drowning, directed by Joanne Akalaitis. Torn is known for working extensively with experimental theater makers Reza Abdoh and Foreman, as the founding director for Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, playing Rusty Trawler in Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Broadway, and creating and starring in Ubu Sings Ubu (2014) with Dan Safer. Most recently, Torn directed the English language premiere of Romina Paula’s The Whole of Time (2024) at Torn Page, a private event space named in honor of his parents Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.
I spent so many hours with Richard, mainly in rehearsal and performance over three shows—three years really, hundreds of hours. Since I was an actor, a lot of the time he spent with me was engaged in a kind of beneficent, jolly, psychological warfare, trying to short circuit my conventional actor instincts. Sometimes he threw up his hands.
