Tom Walmsley (December 13, 1948 – April 17, 2025) was a Canadian playwright, novelist, poet and screenwriter.Tom Walmsley at the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia.
After four years in Liverpool, Walmsley came to Canada with his family in 1952, and was raised in Oshawa, Ontario, and Lorraine, Quebec. He dropped out of high school and battled addictions as a young adult.
In addition to his plays, Walmsley was the winner of the first Three-Day Novel Contest in 1979 for his novel Doctor Tin. He later published a sequel, Shades, and another unrelated novel, Kid Stuff. Walmsley wrote the screenplay for Jerry Ciccoritti's film Paris, France in 1993. Ciccoritti also later adapted Walmsley's play Blood into a film.
Walmsley's most recent play, The Nun's Vacation, "questions the relationship between actions and identities." It premiered in Toronto in 2012, starring Stephen Chambers, Glen Matthews, and Sandy Duarte.
Walmsley's style of writing ranges from the naturalistic to the poetic and, at times, the absurd. He moves easily between dramatic and comedic, and some of his "darkest" work is treated with a cutting sense of humour. His most common themes include sex (both hetero- and homosexual, often involving sado-masochistic fetishes, adulterous affairs, and, in the case of Blood, incest), violence, addiction (to alcohol and heroin in particular), and God (from a Christian perspective)."Finding sobriety and God". The Globe and Mail, 5 December 1995. He rarely deals with politics directly, although he openly displays a distaste for middle-class morality and social conservative interpretations of Christianity.
Early in his career, Walmsley summarized his sense of personal identity as "blond, stocky, below average height, uncircumcised, bisexual, tattooed, with bad teeth and very large feet"."White Boys 'a first' for Walmsley: Playwright says he has exorcised all of the violent demons within"]. The Globe and Mail, 12 May 1982.
Walmsley died in Toronto on April 17, 2025, at the age of 76.
Plays
The Workingman, 1975 The Jones Boy, 1977 Something Red, 1978 White Boys, 1982 Getting Wrecked, 1985 Mr. Nice Guy (with Dolly Reisman), 1985 Maxine, 1995 (performance piece) Blood, 1995 () Delirium, 2006 3 Squares a Day, 2006 Descent, 2006 The Nun's Vacation, 2012
Poetry Rabies, 1975 Lexington Hero, 1977 Sin, 2005 Honeymoon in Berlin, 2005 What Happened, 2007 Concrete Sky, 2009 Rich and Dead as Dogs, 2012 Sunday, Monday and Tuesday Weld, 2013
Novels Doctor Tin, 1979 () Shades, 1992 () Kid Stuff, 2004 () Dog Eat Rat, 2009 (978-1-894469-42-5)
Screenplays Paris, France, 1993 Blood, 2004 (adaptation by Jerry Ciccoritti)
Libretto Julie Sits Waiting 2012
References