Writer	Tom Bentley			Director
Biography	Resume	Reviews	Teaching	Short Stories
Tom Bentley is an award winning director, teacher and writer who in 2002 moved to San Francisco from Canada. During his thirty year career in the profession he was the artistic director of three regional theatres and gained a national reputation for developing and directing new Canadian drama. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, credits his artistic directorship for having engineered “one of the most dramatic come-backs in Canadian theatre history”. Tom is also the founder and producer of several ongoing theatre festivals including the Saskatoon International Fringe.  Since moving to San Francisco, Tom has concentrated on his new career as a writer and has been published in literary magazines both in the U.S. and Canada. He was the finalist for the National Magazine Award in Humor and his first collection of short stories, “Blind Man’s Drum”, now in its second printing, was short-listed for several awards. He is presently working as lyricist with Angie Tysseland on their second collaboration of a musical, is completing a draft of The Transformation of Movement, a book based on the acting technique he has developed during his time teaching in San Francisco, and is in the final stages of completing his novels, “The Unknotted Tongue” and “Driving to Moose Jaw, A Spiritual Fantasy” for publication.  Tom’s early experience was as an actor. He trained with Yat Malmgren at the London Drama Centre and acted for several years in the West End. In the nineties he returned to Europe when he was the recipient of an Arts Board Grant, enabling him to spend a year traveling the world to work with some of the most innovative theatre companies in Europe and Asia. In 2008 he received another Canada Council grant and returned to Europe to teach master classes for the renowned Sala Beckett Theatre in Barcelona. Tom will be living in Barcelona for five months in 2009 to create and direct a version of The Iliad, scheduled to be produced at the Greek Festival in July.  Tom conducts private and group acting classes out of his studio in the Mission and continues to freelance as a director and teacher, having worked for such arts organizations as Axis Dance Company, San Francisco Playwrights Foundation, and Subterranean Shakespeare. He has also been the Artistic Director of Theatre Release, recently directing a controversial production of Genet’s “The Maids”, and spent several years on staff at Aurora Theatre in Berkeley as coordinator of their development program for new plays: the Global Age Project. Presently, Tom’s major focus is as resident director of Tant per Tant, an international theatre company translating, producing, and exchanging plays between Canada and Catalonia.
TomBentley99@hotmail.com