Canadian theater director Jonathan Geenen (front) with his East West Theater actors. [Shanghai Daily]

Most expats come to Shanghai to work, some to study. Few try to build a community. Canadian theater director Jonathan Geenen arrived in Shanghai more than two years ago and helped found the East West Theater, which aims to provide a creative outlet for the city's talented actors and help increase local knowledge of Western theater.

In an extraordinary burst of activity, Geenen has put on eight plays in 14 months, showcasing not only the depth of acting talent in Shanghai but also his own creative flair for creating the magic of theater in the most unlikely places.

Geenen's creative vision can transform a nondescript room in the upper floor of a Maoming Road building into a 1920s depression era living room or boldly stage Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on a fashion catwalk.

The theater group is a non-profit organization that encourages both Chinese and expat actors to become involved. The actors in the group are a mixture of professionals and amateurs.

Geenen's productions have played to packed audiences and have inspired others to launch their own productions.

Treading the boards was far from the dreams of Geenen when he was an aspiring ice hockey player growing up in Canada.

But the talented goalie's promising career was interrupted when he was struck in the arm by a hockey puck during his high school years, severing a bicep muscle.

He had a year off from the sport and, looking for something to do over the winter months, took a part in a musical. Geenen wryly explains that the competitive world of Canadian ice hockey was good preparation for the travails of a professional acting career.

"Hockey in Canada is as competitive as getting into engineering is over here," he says. "You become a number at about age 15. It's cutthroat and it's political and it's demanding and it was a good warm-up for becoming an actor."

Geenen says he never previously thought of being an actor but "couldn't stop" once he had his first experience under the bright lights.

Surprisingly, he says he continually tried to "escape" acting, taking a variety of jobs until he was drawn back into the theater world.

"I don't know what it is, but I think it is simply because it is something that I can do. Some people can fix cars, I can put on a play."

He attended George Brown College Theater School in Toronto, Canada before making a living as a professional actor appearing in more than 35 productions between 2002 and 2005.

But it was love and to "get the hell out of acting" that motivated him to move with his Japanese girlfriend to Japan to teach English.

"I was looking for a way out of what the professional acting world was doing to me," he explains. "I think it's because of the competition, I couldn't focus on anything other than finding the right people to talk to at the right time.

"It's completely ego driven. These aren't bad things but at my age, and at that time of my life, I couldn't deal with it and I didn't do well at it."

He worked for 10 months in Japan, which included appearing in a number of high profile television advertisements, before getting a call from his old theater professor Mark Ceolin, a Shanghai-based Canadian film maker.

Geenen was offered a role as the narrator in a documentary and soon moved to Shanghai where he has lived for two and a half years.

Again, he tried to avoid acting by taking a variety of office jobs but the jobs, which included managing marketing for an in-house magazine, made him miserable and contributed to a bout of ill health in late 2006.

His first play, the four-person "Impromptu," was part of the Shanghai Fringe Festival in November 2006. He said it was the first time that he realized he could organize and put on a play in Shanghai.

In April 2007, Geenen put on his first full length play, "Our Town," a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder.

"I really wanted to do that play. A lot of theater companies start by doing this play because it is not that difficult and you don't need a lot of actors or a complicated set. It is about community and I was looking to start a community."

After that, the productions came thick and fast, with Geenen putting a production every few months.

He has been in a hiatus since his last successful production "Awake and Sing" in June this year, but says he is looking to stage his next production around Christmas and promises it will be startlingly original.

"The circumstance dictate what I will do and when. It would be remiss for me to say I am doing plays for a general audience. I am doing plays for a strong idea and for a need."

(Shanghai Daily October 29, 2008)