News: Griffith (Griff) Brewer dies

(From the CTE)

(This article has been corrected) It is with enormous sadness that I have learned of the passing, last week, of Griff Brewer. Griff was a well-known actor who began his career with the fabled Montreal Repertory Company, but he will probably be best remembered as prop-master at Centaur and a presence in the lives of everyone who worked there.


I first saw Griff in a production at Centaur, when I was a student subscriber. It was a very controversial play, Trevor Griffiths' Comedians, and Griff has the key role. When, later, I would write his biography for The Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia, it was mostly with the memory of that performance in mind: "His acting and professional style are marked by an understated intensity and generosity of spirit." Many who saw him in it, though, will probably tell you that his greatest performance was in the premiere of David Fennario's On The Job, where he played a worker marked by age and ruined by the company.

If you worked at Centaur, and you wanted to find the man between productions, you could be sure he was in the prop room, in the basement, putting order in a decade's-worth of bric-a-brac and furniture. He knew where everything was and, if you got him talking (he wasn't a big talker) he would tell you the story behind the item and the production it came from. He had been there for everything.

His funeral will be Monday, 5pm in NDG. He is survived by his daughter Diane (his wife, Marie, having passed in 1999, his son, David, in 2010.)

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois