Meet the Director
Hi, My name is Richard Enos, and I have been involved in writing, acting, directing and producing for both live theatre and films for over 30 years. It all started off in Montreal in 1991 when I joined the Becket Players, a marvelous church-based group whose productions raised money for children in need.
After a few years of performing on the Becket stage, I summoned up the courage to write and submit an original script entitled ‘S’Cool Daze,’ for the 1994 production and it was accepted! The musical play, which pitted high school students against their teachers in an all-out competition, was a hit with the cast as I made sure that each actor had at least one line in the spotlight. Then in 1996 I wrote another musical comedy entitled ‘Don’t Reign on my Toga.’ which pitted King Feta and the Greeks of the 4th century BC against barbarians from Macedon who wanted to overthrow the kingdom.
Soon after that show I moved to Korea to teach English at the University of Seoul. There, my dramatic play ‘Glazed Carrots‘ was staged by the UOS English Drama Society. It was only until 2003, at he end of my time in Korea, that I would be involved in the dramatic arts again. I was cast for a role in a film called ‘The English Teacher,’ something I was very familiar with, and when it was all said and done, I had become involved in almost all aspects of the film: acting, directing, editing/rewriting, location scouting, props, and even film editing. It was a lot of hard work, but it served as my crash course in the filmmaking process.
Upon returning from Korea, I caught the acting bug, took a few acting courses, got my headshots, and tried my hand at becoming a professional actor.
However, it was very difficult to break into the industry, to get representation and to become part of the union. The fact is that I never became really comfortable in the industry, and did not want the difficult and demanding life that I saw even with friends who were more established actors. Besides, I realized that as much as I liked acting, my real passions were writing and directing.
Fast forward to 2008, when I was part of ‘Actors Fight Club,’ a group run for actors by actors to help each other out to prepare for auditions and hone their craft. It was there that I starting bringing short scenes of a film I was working on called ‘In the Can,’ which all takes place in the bathroom of a reception hall during a wedding. I enjoyed the challenge of telling the entire story of what’s going on ‘out there’ from within a bathroom, and I reasoned that I would be able to shoot it quickly and that it wouldn’t cost so much to rent the set. The actors found the scenes interesting and were very curious about the whole story arc, as they were only getting bits and pieces. One night, I spontaneously asked these talented actors if they would be willing to be part of the film if I decided to produce it, and they unanimously agreed to be part of it. I found a bathroom I could use at an actual reception hall, found a cinematographer who had crew members willing to participate, and the film, with a cast of 16 actors, was shot in one feverish day.
Although it cost me about $1000 to pay for the crew and for a buffet lunch, I would classify this venture as true low-budget ‘Guerilla Filmmaking,’ which for me is really the way to go if you want to simply be creative and make a statement with a film. Obviously some kind of budget would be nice, but that usually forces you into the industry bureaucracies and leaves creative control in the hands of the money people. My main aim has always been to be creative with films and help others be creative as well.
This led me to a Meetup group meeting in Toronto called AWF (Actors, Writers, and Filmmakers), and as the organizer bowed out after the first meeting, three of us co-founded the group and ran it for about 4 years, leading to dozens of short films created by its members. We participated in and even hosted ‘film races,’ which were time-limited film competitions using particular criteria that really motivated groups of people to ‘get out there and shoot’ in true guerilla fashion. Films I worked on, including ‘Do Not Disturb,’ ‘Denied,’ ‘The Milk of Human Kindness‘ and ‘Out of Time‘ (which won the best film award), were part of film races.
My next big project was ‘Wailing at the Wall‘ in 2012. I was trying to create a scenario where bitter cultural rivals (an Arab man and a Jewish man) were forced to see and think about things from each other’s perspective, which would then lead to greater mutual acceptance. You would have to watch the film to decide if I was able to pull it off.
After appearing in a few other films in 2013 I took a break as my son was born in 2014. It was only in November of 2017 when I returned to the stage and to film, where I would put on a multimedia one-man show entitled ‘Action,’ for one night only in front of a small but enthusiastic audience of supporters. This stage play which featured me playing 13 different characters, was also supplemented with video interspersed throughout which aided in answering the question, amidst growing corruption and tyranny, “Should we take action?”
After this, I didn’t get involved in any film or theatre projects and focused on raising my son Kellen. In a fortuitous turn of events, however, I was asked by the owner of my son’s alternative school if I would be willing to teach writing and drama to his class, and put on a play at the end of the year. This gave me the opportunity to write and direct again, and led to a highly acclaimed presentation of ‘Trouble at the Monarch Academy Garden‘ in June of 2023.
In the fall I began teaching film to the children, and this latest experience is what has led me to begin moving in the direction of building a film school for kids, starting with an intensive 3-week program this summer. I’m excited to see what this leads to!
