John Hirsch

Who was John Hirsch?

John Stephen Hirsch, OC was an Hungarian-Canadian theater director. He was born in Siófok, Hungary to József and Ilona Hirsch, both of whom perished in The Holocaust along with his younger brother István. Hirsch survived after spending most of the Second World War years in Budapest, and came to Canada in 1947 through the War Orphans Project of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Arriving in Winnipeg, Hirsch was taken into the home of Alex and Pauline Shack. He remained close to the Shacks for the rest of his life, and although he lived in New York and Toronto, maintained strong ties with the city of Winnipeg.

In 1957, Hirsch and Tom Hendry co-founded Theatre 77, which they combined with the Winnipeg Little Theatre in 1958 to form the Manitoba Theatre Centre with Hirsch as artistic director and Hendry as manager. MTC became an influential model for regional theatres across Canada and the United States, and is one of Hirsch's most important contributions to Canadian theatre. He directed many plays and musicals at MTC, which he left in 1965.