Jonathan Monro

Jonathan Luke Weiser Monro (born Jonathan Luke Weiser, June 6, 1974) is one of the most well-known theatre artists in Canada. An actor, writer, composer, pianist, singer, and musical director, his first major appearance was as a pianist at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City in 1991.

Jonathan grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland. His father, David Weiser (formerly a traveling salesman from Montreal) co-founded the Newfoundland Traveling Theatre Company in 1972. The company gave a start to many of today’s Canadian stars: Mary Walsh, Andy Jones, Cathy Jones, Greg Malone, Robert Joy, and the late Tommy Sexton. He retired from the company in 1976 to pursue his own wholesale and retail business. Jonathan's mother, Susan Weiser (née Susan Tilley), was a swim coach. Jonathan has one sister, Andrea Monro, who is a singer/songwriter. Jonathan attended Holy Heart of Mary High School in St. John's, graduating in 1992. He pursued a piano performance degree at Arizona State University, but his trajectory was cut short in 1994 (see career). He transitioned to vocal performance at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1994–1995, then on to the renowned musical theatre program Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario from 1995–1997.

Jonathan's first pursuit was piano, and he made his first major appearance at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City at the age of 16. In April 1993, he won third prize in the Johanna Hodges International Piano Competition in Palm Springs, California. The following year, as he was preparing for the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, he began experiencing blackouts and seizures while playing and even listening to the piano. He was forced to quit playing, and decided to pursue theatre. In an interview, he was quoted as saying,

"I always had a suspicion that theatre was my first love. My body proved that suspicion. It was deeply upsetting, but I have faith that the hours spent at the piano will someday pay off.".

Two years later, in 1997, Jonathan made his professional theatre debut at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada in Camelot, The Taming of the Shrew, and Coriolanus. That year, he won the Louis Applebaum Tyrone Guthrie Award for his musical contribution to the festival. He returned the following year, furthering his classical theatre studies in the John Sullivan Hayes Training Program, and traveled with the Stratford Festival to New York, where he made his Broadway debut in The Miser and Much Ado About Nothing.

In 1998, he was cast in the first national U.S. tour of 2 Pianos, 4 Hands. Since then, Jonathan has performed in over seventy productions for stage, radio, TV and film, and has appeared in almost every regional theatre in Canada, and in many in the United States. His first large role in a film was in Heyday!, by Gordon Pinsent, which won a prestigious Silver Hugo Award at the Chicago Film Festival. He was also featured in the pilot/first episode of the CTV/CBS series Flashpoint, the original Canadian cast of The Producers, and starred in the North American premiere of Glorious.

As a composer, lyricist, and bookwriter, Jonathan has written over twenty original pieces for theatre, including the recent world premieres of AfterImage, and Fear of Flight (which will be featured at the Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver, February 2010). His musical, Variations on a Nervous Breakdown, won four Betty Mitchell Awards (including two for Monro), and he has two new shows slotted for production in the 2009–2010 season. Calgary Sun theatre critic Louis B. Hobson wrote in one of his reviews: “Monro deserves to be compared to such giants as Sondheim and Lehrer”. Jonathan will musically direct the Canadian Premiere of the Broadway hit The Light in the Piazza, by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel starting January 2010.