Vittorio Rossi

Vittorio Rossi

Vittorio Luciano Rossi (born April 16, 1961) is a playwright, actor and screenwriter born in Montréal, Canada. He grew up in the district of Ville Emard. Graduating from Concordia University in 1985 with a B.F.A. specializing in theatre performance, Rossi has earned the respect of the national theatre community with his award winning plays. Mr. Rossi stormed the Montréal theatre scene with two consecutive Best New Play Awards at the Quebec Drama Festival in 1986 and 1987. His plays have been produced in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, New York City, Boston, Syracuse and The Stratford Festival in Ontario.

In 1987 Rossi became Playwright-in-Residence at Montréal’s prestigious Centaur Theatre, during which time he wrote his first full length play, The Chain, which opened Centaur’s 20th anniversary season in October 1988. The show was then produced at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Other plays include: Scarpone, In Pursuit Of A Cow, The Last Adam, (winner of the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Drama in 1996), Love and Other Games, Filumena (Translation), Paradise By The River. His latest work may be his most ambitious work to date, a collection of three plays inspired by the life of his late father entitled A Carpenter’s Trilogy. The three plays include Hellfire Pass (winner of the MECCA Award for Best New Text in 2006), Carmela’s Table (winner of the MECCA Award for Best New Text in 2007), and The Carpenter.

Rossi was Writer-in-Residence at Concordia University in 1990-91 where he also taught playwriting. He is also the recipient of the 1994 Premio Award given by CIBPA (Canadian Italian Business Professionals Association) in the field of Creativity for bringing honour and distinction to the Italian-Canadian community with his body of work. In 2003 Mr. Rossi taught screenwriting at the University of Sherbrooke.

As an actor, Rossi appeared as a regular as Dino Marrone on Urban Angel and as Detective Tom Celano in the award-winning French-language television series Omertá. His film credits include performances in the CBS Emmy Award-winning Day One, and the critically acclaimed feature Malarek. Rossi was also a co-star in Le Sphinx and acted the lead in the film Canvas starring opposite Gary Busey and John Rhys-Davies. His most recent work was co-starring in the feature film The Timekeeper. He has written several screenplays and has directed a film version of Little Blood Brother. His plays are published by TalonBooks.