By Neil Armstrong
Award-winning actor Vanessa Sears didn’t assume the position of Juliet in Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet” on the Stratford Pageant would come her means so quickly in her profession however when the chance to audition did, she flew in from New York for it.
Recognized for her roles in musicals comparable to “Mary Poppins” and “The Wizard of Oz” at Younger Individuals’s Theatre, she at all times wished to be in a Shakespeare play and remembers being in Soulpepper Theatre Firm’s manufacturing of “King Lear“ in 2020. That is her second season on the Stratford Pageant.
“I really feel like coming from musical theatre and having a level in musical theatre, it’s been an fascinating journey to get into auditions and get into rooms in entrance of administrators who’re doing performs as a result of individuals simply see you in a sure means,” says Sears, noting that her talent set extends past musicals and that she is obsessed with performs.” She additionally performs Olivia in Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “Twelfth Night time.”
Though initially immune to singing in her position as Juliet as a result of she wished to take a break from what she does in musicals, she warmed as much as director Sam White’s thought and sings at first of the play. It grabs the eye of the viewers, says Sears, who additionally credit the sound designer, Debashis Sinha, for making it a collaborative course of.
Her first season was in 2019 in “Little Store of Horrors” and “Billy Elliott” which she loved and he or she notes that it her second time on the Stratford Pageant doing repertory theatre.
On account of the COVID-19 pandemic, she, like others on the Stratford Pageant, needed to pivot to a special means of working.
“We have been all set in 2020; I used to be solid in a world premiere musical [“Here’s What It Takes”] of Steven Web page, previously of the Barenaked Women. We have been all so excited, there was a lot buzz, we have been like a month and a half into rehearsal and naturally, as did everybody, the world shut down and all the things modified. It was scary.”
She was one among ten people who received to do a filmed cabaret, “Up Shut and Musical,” a mini-solo piece on the Stratford Pageant, North America’s largest classical repertory theatre firm.
Sears, who was born and raised in Deep River, Ontario, and is of Guyanese and Jamaican heritage — her father is from Guyana and her mom is from Jamaica — stated it was a wierd expertise as a result of a part of the rationale artists do reside theatre is due to the reference to an viewers.
In 2021, curator and director Marcus Nance invited her to carry out within the cabaret, “Why We Inform the Story,” an out of doors present with fellow actors on stage in a parking zone below a tent.
“The entire expertise was a lot about resilience and for me it was a lot about gratitude for alternatives to maintain making artwork.”
When “Romeo and Juliet” and “Twelfth Night time” shut on October 26, she’s going to take a trip in Jamaica and be again in November to carry out within the Ross Petty pantomime which Canadian Stage is producing this yr. After 25 years, Ross Petty Productions ended its annual vacation household musicals on the Elgin and Winter Backyard Theatre in Toronto in 2022.
Many theatregoers missed it in 2023 so for the primary time Canadian Stage will produce the panto. This can be a primary for Sears in a pantomime; she would be the villain that Petty, a Canadian actor and theatre producer, used to play. “The Wizard of Oz,” a “Toto-ly Twistered model” will run from December 6 to January 5, 2025, and he or she is worked up for the change of tempo from performing in Shakespearean performs during the last six months.
