{"id":35173,"date":"2020-07-24T03:49:58","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T10:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=35173"},"modified":"2020-07-22T11:03:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T18:03:40","slug":"and-the-2020-jessies-go-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2020\/07\/24\/and-the-2020-jessies-go-to\/","title":{"rendered":"And the 2020 Jessies go to &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Wendy Bross Stuart accepted her GVPTA Career Achievement Award while playing the koto. <em>(screenshot)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>On June 29, the 38th annual Jessie Awards were celebrated virtually, with several Jewish community members among those being honoured.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The GVPTA [Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance] Career Achievement Award went to <strong>Wendy Bross Stuart<\/strong>, who gave her acceptance speech while playing the <em>koto<\/em> (a Japanese stringed instrument).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cLike most middle-class Jewish kids growing up in postwar New York City, I went to Broadway shows with my parents every few weeks,\u201d she said. \u201cI dreamed of conducting the pit orchestra and conducted many records in my living room on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy first role was in <em>Peter Pan<\/em> \u2013 as Tinker Bell. I was 6 years old and three feet tall!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI music-directed my first show \u2013 <em>South Pacific<\/em> \u2013 when I was 13, for a day camp in Tarrytown. I was given a script \u2013 no score \u2013 so I played it all by ear &#8230; in the preferred key for each of the teenage actors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLater, I went to a musical theatre training program in upstate New York, where I played scenes opposite a young man \u2013 named Stephen Schwartz.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bross Stuart did her graduate work in ethnomusicology, with a focus on Coast Salish music; research that was published, as was her later research on Northern Haida songs. She and her family lived in Japan for many years, where she continued studying traditional music for Japanese koto and shamisen, earning an advanced teaching licence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve arranged and accompanied many Yiddish songs for voice and piano, producing four CDs with Claire Klein Osipov,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve even arranged some Yiddish songs for koto and voice,\u201d she added, noting \u201cYiddish was the language of my grandparents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love arranging and conducting choral music: 20 of my pieces have been published in the U.S. and Canada; most recently, an arrangement of my daughter Jessica\u2019s composition,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the last 15 years, we have co-produced and music-directed the annual Holocaust Commemorative Evening for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn theatre, I have thoroughly enjoyed working with <em>you<\/em>. Where? At Theatre Under the Stars, the Arts Club, the Electric Company, Touchstone Theatre, Famous Artists, Blackbird Theatre, Snapshots Collective, Presentation House, the Chutzpah! Festival and 25 years at Perry Ehrlich\u2019s Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy husband Ron Stuart \u2013 anthropologist and filmmaker \u2013 has been with me on this journey. Our most recent collaboration is our film company: Cultural Odyssey Films. All eight of our most recent films were shot on location in South Africa over the last 10 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you very much for this special honour. I look forward to working with you in the near future!\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the small theatre category, <strong>Itai Erda<\/strong>l and <strong>Amir Ofek<\/strong> won for outstanding lighting design and set design, respectively, for the Search Party\u2019s production of <em>The Father<\/em>, while <strong>Warren Kimmel<\/strong> was part of the cast of Raincity Theatre\u2019s <em>Company<\/em>, which won significant artistic achievement: outstanding innovative and immersive storytelling.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Nominees for this year\u2019s awards included, in the large theatre category, <strong>Erdal<\/strong> for outstanding lighting of Savage Society\u2019s <em>Skyborn: A Land Reclamation Odyssey<\/em> (presented by the Cultch) and <strong>Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg<\/strong> for outstanding choreography in <em>Cipher<\/em>, presented by Arts Club Theatre Company (in partnership with Vertigo Theatre); in the small theatre category, <strong>Stephen Aberle<\/strong> for outstanding performance by an actor in a supporting role for his role in Slamming Door Artist Collective\u2019s <em>The Sea<\/em>; and, for outstanding original script, <strong>Deborah Vogt<\/strong> for <em>Big Sister<\/em>, presented by Rapid Pitch Productions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wendy Bross Stuart accepted her GVPTA Career Achievement Award while playing the koto. (screenshot) On June 29, the 38th annual Jessie Awards were celebrated virtually, with several Jewish community members among those being honoured. The GVPTA [Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance] Career Achievement Award went to Wendy Bross Stuart, who gave her acceptance speech while [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[6769,8741,7285,3036,6208,1719],"class_list":["post-35173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-choreography","tag-design","tag-jessie-awards","tag-music","tag-theatre","tag-wendy-bross-stuart"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}