Ellen Denny’s (BA’12) talent for bringing stories to life on stage has earned the young actress much praise in the theatre community.

By: Mark Campbell

She may have been nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award and chosen as one of Now Magazine’s breakthrough Toronto stage artists of 2017, but Ellen Denny (BA’12) finds it hard to pick one achievement that stands out in her burgeoning acting career.

“I think there have been many highlights along the way,” says Denny, who earned those accolades as the grief-stricken Alice in Life After, an acclaimed musical by Britta Johnson that was staged in Toronto in fall 2017.

“With each role, there will be a night where something clicks, like making some discovery on stage or talking with an audience member who was really affected by the show. Even waiting to go on stage, I think, ‘Wait a second, I’m in a professional theatre production. How cool is that?’ It’s a lot of little pinch-me moments like that that stay with me.”

Anyone who has ever seen Denny on stage, be it in a Dalhousie Theatre Program production back in the day, at Neptune Theatre, or in cities like Montreal and Toronto, knows that she has more than earned the honours that continue to come her way. The London, ON, native’s talent belies a lifelong passion for theatre nurtured by her parents, who exposed her to the works of legends such as Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan, Oscar Wilde, and Henrik Ibsen.

“I grew up idolizing actors such as Seana McKenna, Lucy Peacock and Tom McCamus, who had been at the Stratford Festival throughout my childhood and are still doing amazing things,” Denny says. “By the time I was in high school, I realized I really wanted to be part of that.”

That realization led her to Dalhousie, inspired in part by the fact her older sister had moved to Halifax, but even more so by the promise of a double major that combined acting and operatic singing.

“Dalhousie gave me a safe place to get my feet wet,” Denny says. “There was less pressure and competition there than you would have in Toronto, for example, so that gave me more time on the stage and more confidence. It was a very supportive environment and the ability to work on my singing opened up opportunities in musical theater, which has been a huge boost for me career-wise.”

Dalhousie also provided financial support in the form of a president’s scholarship, which Denny says was vital in pursuing her dream. “It’s great to be able to enter a freelance arts career that does not have much stability without being heavily in debt. It really gave me a leg up.”

With a solid foundation from Dal and a string of highly-acclaimed performances on her resumé, you may wonder where Denny goes next. The short answer is that she is creating a play based on subject matter near and dear to her heart: her great-great-aunt Harriet Brooks. “She was Canada’s first female nuclear physicist and was considered second only to Marie Curie, who was her contemporary,” Denny says. “Harriet was shut out of her profession when she married, so I am determined to un-silence her voice by bringing it to life onstage.”

In the meantime, Denny continues to bring other stories to life through her acting. Her dream is to work at every theatre across Canada, including a return to the Neptune stage. But what if Broadway or the West End catch wind of her talents and beckon? “That would be exciting, and I would do it for the right show,” Denny says. “But I think Canada will always be my home base. I really want to contribute to the amazing theatre community we have here.”