Talent Bank : U - Z
Theatre BC's Talent Bank
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Jessica
Van der Veen : Jessica Van der Veen has been teaching scene study at Gastown Actors' Studio for almost ten years. Her classes emphasize rehearsal techniques and require a high degree of commitment from the students. She sees acting as a long-term path of personal and artistic growth and strives to create a supportive atmosphere for creativity to flourish. Many students have said " I couldn't believe I could work so hard and have so much fun at the same." |
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Kirsten
Van Ritzen : Kirsten is an actor, commedienne, writer, director and instructor. She has performed in theatres across Canada and the US, and received acclaim for six one-woman shows. Recent acting credits include Little Women and Twelfth Night for Kaleidoscope Theatre; and Alleycats The Musical for which she received an Ovation Nomination: Oustanding Performance Female. Comedic Improvisation ia a particular specialty. Five seasons of Sin City the Live Improvised Soap Opera at Toronto's The Second City garnered a Canadian Comedy Award Nomination and the CBC-TV comdey Liquid Sopaz. Kirsten currentrly improvises with Vancouver Theatresports League She had directed new plays at the Walking Fish Festival and Victoria's Young Playwrights Festival, and received an ACTCO Nomination: Best Director for her work on Fallen Angels in Ontario. Kirsten enjoys teaching adults and teens and has held faculty positions at York University, The Second City, Randolph Academy, Vancouver Theatresports, St. Albert Children's Theatre and amny other studios. Further info may be found at www.thekirstenvanritzenshow.8k.com . |
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Jen Viens: Jen is currently Instructor and Artistic Director of Twisted Tree Theatre. She specializes in teaching children, and presenting plays for young audiences. Jen is the former drama instructor for Bare Bones Theatre, and spent many years directing, producing, and acting for the Company. Jen has taken her extensive stage experience and branched out in to the world of Film and Television working both in front and behind the camera with independent and mainstream companies in the lower mainland. She has training in comedy improv and clowning, attended UBC's theatre program and has studied with Matthew Harrison at the Actor's Foundry. |
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| ( no picture available) | Rob Walters
: Rob has many credits for make-up work in both theatre and film, including feature movies, movies of the week and documentary films. Selected theatre credits include: Hello Dolly!, Gypsy, The Sound of Music and Carousel (Royal City Musical Theatre); Over the River and Through the Woods and Whose Under Where (Metro Theatre); The Pirates of Penzance, The Gondoliers (Fraser Valley Gilbert & Sullivan Society); Harvey and Present Laughter (Burr Theatre); Annie, Little Shop of Horrors, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Kiss Me Kate, The King and I, Anne of Green Gables, Footloose, and Crazy For You (TUTS). Theatre BC: Rob led a Make-up workshop at the Backstage Conference in 2004 in Richmond. |
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Jerry Wasserman: Jerry is an actor, critic, Professor of English and Theatre, and Head of the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Jerry is an internationally known Canadian theatre scholar whose books include Modern Canadian Plays (in its 4th edition), Twenty Years at Play: A New Play Centre Anthology, Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice (co-edited with Sherrill Grace), and Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lescarbots Theatre of Neptune in New France. He also wrote and hosted Modern Canadian Theatre, a 12-hour TV series for the Knowledge Network. Jerry has won UBCs Killam Teaching Prize and the Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance and Development in the Fine and Performing Arts. He reviewed theatre for many years for CBC radio and The Province newspaper, and currently reviews for his website, Vancouverplays.com. A long-time member of Canadian Actors Equity and ACTRA, and a charter member of the Union of BC Performers, Jerry has more than 200 professional credits for stage (The Playhouse, Arts Club, and many other Vancouver companies) and screen, including principal roles in feature films Watchmen, Alive, Look Whos Talking and I, Robot, and continuing roles in numerous TV episodics: Smallville, Mysterious Ways, Beggars & Choosers, Cold Squad, The Crow, Madison, MANTIS, The Heights, Booker, Wiseguy and The New Adventures of Beans Baxter. Theatre BC: Jerry is serving as Adjudicator for the MAINSTAGE 2010 Festival in Kamloops. |
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Christopher Weddell:
Christopher is an actor, director, dramaturge and playwright. He has been steadily busy since 1989 with Bard On The Beach, United Players, Belfry Theatre, Western Canada Theatre, and the Canadian College of the Performing Arts, among others. He has been nominated for 2 Jessie Awards and received the Edmund Kean Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005.Theatre BC: Christopher served as A New Play Festival dramaturge at MAINSTAGE 2010 in Kamloops. |
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Kathleen Weiss
: Kate is a director, teacher and dramaturge. She was the Artistic Director of Women In View for seven years and is also a former Artistic Director of Tamahnous Theatre. She is known across the country for work with new scripts and innovative projects. She has directed in all of Vancouver's major theatres and has taught and directed for Studio 58, The Vancouver Playhouse School, UBC, SFU and the TooBa Physical Theatre Centre. Kate's directing credits include Strangers Among Us for Western Gold Theatre and Step Right Up for Theatre Terrific. Theatre BC: Kate has served as an Adjudicator, Playwriting Competition Juror and Workshop Instructor. |
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Barbara Wheeldon Barbara is a successful film, television and theatre actor as well as an experienced director and playwright. She has appeared in everything from Anne of Green Gables as Marilla and Oklahoma as Aunt Eller onstage to roles on Queer as Folk and Street Legal. Barbara has directed many of her own plays, including "Santas's Ho Ho Ho" and "Is It Lunch Yet?", both of which were performed and aired on television in Delta. She also has a long list of other directing credits, highlights include: "Guys and Dolls"; "An Evening of Cabaret"; "The Play 1949"; and "Amazing Gracie". She worked for many years with the Huron Country Playhouse and St. Mary's Community Players in Ontario as a director, writer and actor. She is also the author of a popular how-to book called The Camera and You!! |
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June
Whitaker June has been a noted acting teacher in Vancouver for over 20 years and has trained some of Vancouvers most talented and successful actors. She has been a highly experienced professional actor for over 50 years, working in London, Los Angeles and New York on the stage and in film and television. Since 1978 she has been Artistic Director of the Theatre Group and a drama professional at Trinity Western University. "June
is really amazing she brought out so many feelings and acting skills in me,
emotions and talents I never even knew I was capable of." |
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Mary Lou
Whittaker: Ms. Whittaker started her career as a dancer and over many years has worked as a stage manager, producer, director and choreographer in England, across Canada, and in Vancouver. Mary Lou graduated from UBC with a BA in Drama. Ms.Whittaker has taught Stage Management, Movement and Acting at Langara College. Mary Lou has worked on over 100 productions in various capacities for Vancouvers major companies, including The Playhouse, Arts Club, City Stage, Greenthumb and West Coast Actors. |
| (no photo avail.) | Robinson Wilson: Robinson has choreographed over thirty productions over the last ten years. He has worked with many community theatre companies, secondary schools and youth companies, and has a spotless record in terms of safety- not a single injury. He has taught many workshops in Stage Combat for the Association of BC Drama Educators, at individual schools and at their yearly Provincial Festival. His work on Courtenay Little Theatre's Mainstage-winning production of Romeo and Juliet (2005) was honoured with a special award for Outstanding Achievement in Fight Choreography. |
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Colleen
Winton: Colleen was nominated for a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for "Oustanding Performance in a Musical" for Little Shop Horrors in 1989. She was also nominated for "Outstanding Performance in a Musical in a Supporting Role" for A Chorus Line at Vancouver Playhouse in1985. and for "Outstanding Performance by an Actress" for Farther West at Touchstone. She has appeared in many TV series including : the First season of X-Files, Human Cargo (2004) and Taken (2002). She appeared in the Movie: Heart of a child (1994), Green Dolphi Beat (1994) and many others. |
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Richard Wolfe:
As well as having the pleasure of working as an instructor at UCFV and UBC, Richard is Co-artistic Producer of Western Theatre Conspiracy. He has directed over 35 plays including the Canadian premieres of Will Eno's Thom Pain (based on nothing), Tim Carlson's Omniscience, Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange, Douglas Carter Beane's As Bees in Honey Drown and Jez Butterworth's Mojo. In 2004 he was an associate producer of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and artist in residence at Rumble Productions. Richard is a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the Lincoln Centre Theatre's Directors' Lab in New York where he directed a workshop of Thornton Wilder's "The Drunken Sisters" in 2001. He was also a member of the Directors' Project at the Shaw Festival. He has taught theatre at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, UBC, UCFV, the William Davis Centre and a number of other private schools around the county. Richard currently serves as the president of See Seven, a Vancouver marketing initiative for independent theatre. He is also a founding member of the Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan Festival in Saskatoon, now in its 23rd season. He has been nominated for two Jessie Richardson theatre awards for Outstanding Direction and also won the Ray Michel award for Outstanding Body of Work by an Emerging Director. Wolfe earned his MFA in Directing from UBC. |
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Jill Wyness:
Jill is a makeup addict. Since grade four, she has been fascinated by makeup's ability to transform the way things look, and the way people feel about the way they look. Jill has worked with makeup for theatre, film, print, television, fashion shows, and retail. She has even done makeup for store-window mannequins! Jill earned her BFA in Theatre and Art History from the University of Victoria. She has performed with Pacific Opera, Victoria, and is currently a sessional teacher for makeup at UBC's Department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing. Theatre BC: Jill served as instructor for a Make-up and Wigs course at Mainstage 2000 in Delta and Make-Up Short Cuts for Backstage 2002. |
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