Acting for Stage and Screen

In a career spanning more than thirty years, John has been a busy screen and stage actor. He has appeared in leading roles on Toronto’s mainstages, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Off-Broadway as well as at numerous North American regional theatres such as Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre. He has had a long standing artistic relationship with the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. In 2018, he won the Best Actor award there for his performance as Eric in Stephen Karam’s The Humans, a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer prize and winner of a Tony for best new play. As a teacher, he has taught and directed students at several colleges and universities across Canada and since 2005, has been the director of Humber College’s screen acting program. In 2016, Humber recognised him with the President’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

On screen, he is much in demand as a character actor. He has been a series regular (KUNG FU, THE CITY, LITTLE MEN, CARTER) and has acted with a compendium of notable film and stage actors. His imdb page lists more than one hundred and twenty screen appearances. Highlights include the Peabody award-winning film, “THE INTERROGATION OF MICHAEL CROWE” as well as the Genie award winner for the indie film “THE DANE”. Recent appearances include FX’s Mrs. America, and the upcoming Netflix series Jupiters’ Legacy. This fall, he will appear as CIA Director John Brennan in the CBS mini-series The Green Room opposite Jeff Daniels. Raised bilingual in Montreal, John has also acted in french on stage and in the hit Quebec series “L”OR”. In addition, he has performed in several international commercials, radio dramas and appeared in the comedy digital series SAVE ME for CBC Gem.

In 1998, John produced and directed the short feature film Jimmy Pacheco which received nominations for Best Comedy at the Yorktown and Mill Valley Film Festivals. He wrote and performed the one man drama Tansey’s Brag ( subsequently taped for Bravo television and CBC radio) as well as Walking on Crimson, a play inspired in part by Romeo Dallaire’s UN Command in Rwanda which he performed in the Toronto Fringe Festival. He has produced several showcase films with graduates of the program, most notably the feature length ""After Lola"" with the Class of 2013.

Trained for the stage at Concordia University (BA English & Theatre) and The Webber-Douglas Academy in London, he also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

In his spare time, he plays tennis, cycles and travels. He is married to the actor, Maria Ricossa with whom he raised three wonderful daughters.

Eli Ham is a Toronto-based, coach, actor, director, dramaturge, and arts educator with over 20 years of experience. He is a graduate of George Brown Theatre School, The Birmingham
Conservatory for Classical Theatre and York University’s inaugural Artists in Education program.

As a teaching artist with the Stratford Festival’s Education Department, he visits elementary and high schools, colleges and universities across North America and has directed a number of the department’s summer theatre programs/intensives over the last 15 years. He has been a guest instructor at Cardinal Carter Arts Academy, St. Clair College, The University of Michigan, Butler University and George Brown College where he worked as a speech professor. He also works as a speech and dialect coach independently.

As an actor, Elias has toured North America extensively and performed in most states, provinces and territories including seasons at The Stratford Festival, The Grand Theatre and the Blyth Festival. He was the dramaturge/director for the premiere of Keith Barker’s This is How We Got Here, which was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2018. His film/TV credits include Sarah Polley’s film adaptation of Miriam Toews’ Women Talking; Titans, Nikita (Warner Bros.), Reacher (Amazon), The Umbrella Academy, Shadow Hunters (Netflix), Kin (Lionsgate Films), Condor (MGM), Reign (CW), Hannibal, Hemlock Grove, Copper (ABC/BBCA), The Listener (CTV), Murdoch Mysteries (CityTV/CBC), Being Erica (CBC), Genius (Disney), In a Heartbeat (Alliance Atlantis). His video games series credits include Watch Dogs, Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell (Ubisoft).

Mike Kirby has won 12 CLIO Awards for advertising excellence in his 35-year career as an actor, narrator, broadcaster, author and world trekker.

Theatrically, Mike has appeared in principal roles off-Broadway in Oliver Hailey’s Red Rover, Red Rover, in Toronto Free Theatre’s production of Sharon Pollack’s Doc, Theater Calgary’s Walsh, K2 and Beauty and the Beast; A Streetcar Named Desire and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in regional theatres across Canada and the US, and the National Art Center’s production of You Can’t Take It With You.

Mike’s title roles in major motion pictures include The Silent Partner, The Kidnapping of the President, In Praise of Older Women, John Boorman's Where the Heart Is, and the classic Meatballs, directed by Ivan Reitman.

Voice over credits include the network voice of HGTV, and the station voice of Newstalk Radio 1010 and CJAD in Montreal.

Commercial clients include the Toronto Blue Jays, Stratford Festival, Ontario Tourism, West Side Story, and Broadway’s Kiss of the Spiderwoman. His movie trailers include James Bond, Scream 2, Good Will Hunting, Trainspotting, Jurassic Park, and Star Trek.

Mike was the host/announcer of the Special Olympics World Winter Games at Skydome in Toronto and is narrator of the ten-part documentary series Brazil Untamed for the Love Nature Channel. Other clients include the award-winning CBC documentary series Witness, The Aztec Empire for PBS, and History of the Crusades.

Michael David Kirby has narrated seven audiobooks for Audible including Jane Urquhart’s The Underpainter, Daniel Coleman’s Yardworks, Michael Quetting’s Papa Goose, and the anthology Toronto Noir.

As a hiker, Mike has guided trekkers to the Everest Base Camp and has hiked the Camino Di Santiago Campostella in its entirety. He is the bestselling author of two Hiker Mike books and has penned two definitive how-to books on the commercial voice-over industry, The Announcer’s Voice-Over Workbook and The Message. He teaches voice performance through his company Voiceworx.com and at Humber College in Toronto.

Mike earned an Honours BA with a double major in drama and the Renaissance from Victoria College at the University of Toronto, and is a graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York City where he studied personally with Sanford Meisner for two humility-filled years.