COVID puts dreams on hold

Photo: Contributed

Julia Chambers performs in Kelowna Actors Studio?s Spring Awakening, which also featured Jenna Geen.

COVID has killed many of our businesses and our dreams as adults, but what has it done to our youth who have just started to spread their wings?

Triple threat girls – talented in music, dance, and drama — Julia Chambers and Jenna Geen were in the middle of their specialized schooling when COVID hit. 

I’m happy to report, that these two have done much better than you would think.

Jenna, 21, and Julia, 20, both born in Kelowna, are two incredibly talented and focused young performers. They have witnessed all that they hold dear, the musical theatre world, cease. Their future is not as clear right now, yet they have still forged their individual way through the void.

Julia was always artistic, but in a shy personal way. “Just not in front of people,” she explained. 

She comes by her artistic side naturally. Her mother, Deb Martin, is a full-time painter who relishes extraordinary colour in her acrylic paintings. Julia started singing lessons at 12. Her training was strictly classical and she sang with Alexandra Babbel’s choir, Candesca, for three years. 

It was in her high school days that she found Kelowna Actors Studio — KAS — and met Jenna.

Jenna was also shy. “I had no focus as a kid, but I knew I wanted to perform,” she admitted. 

She loved dancing and started at five. She also loved spelling and won her Grade 6 spelling bee at Glenmore Elementary School. She begged her mom for voice lessons when she was 12. Her first show with KAS was Fiddler On The Roof.

Their two worlds collided at KAS during their senior year. Some collisions are horrific and some are fortuitous. This was the latter.

The Kelowna Actors Studio Academy is a non-profit charitable organization that provides specialized training for young performers and pre-COVID had provided scholarships for those going on to post-secondary studies in the arts. The academy is a place to immerse oneself in the theatre world.

Julia and Jenna both worked hard with their core classes the year before joining KAS Academy in order to have more time to devote to the academy curriculum.

They both felt this was the type of school designed to prepare them for their entrance auditions and give them practical experience at a depth that they couldn’t find at their respective high schools.

The year Julia and Jenna participated was full of phenomenal and promising young artists. All the graduates went on to the top musical theatre schools here and abroad. A school mate, Celeste Catena, received a role in the show Chicago at the Stratford Festival in Ontario.

This fledgling academy has a great track record thanks to the expertise of KAS co-founder Randy Leslie and his knowledgeable team of teachers and has created a roster of talented youth making their way toward a performing arts career. 

After graduation, the girl’s world split. Jenna went to Randolph College for the Performing Arts in Toronto and started a two-year diploma in the Performing Arts program.

Julia went to the prestigious Tisch School of Performing Arts, NYU, New York and began a four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts program.

They both left Kelowna with dreams of a musical theatre career. For two years, the girls have been spending from early morning until late at night immersed in what they love.

Their schools have given each girl a great unexpected gift – it broadened their minds.

This enlightenment will give them the confidence to diversify, which will add longevity to a typically short-lived career path.

Julia, who has always enjoyed writing and loves people's stories, discovered journalism. She will perhaps be able to either perform their stories or write about them. She has two more years to work on her chosen major and new minor for her degree.

In the meantime, back home, she has been teaching in the Junior youth series of classes at KAS and performing on KAS’s main stage when allowed by COVID restrictions.

Jenna’s two-year program is, in reality, a three-year program squeezed into two. She has been hard at work finishing her on-line courses for her graduation in early December. 

Her graduating show, The Awakening of Spring by Frank Wedekind, was due to open the day everything closed down. Jenna was grateful to have had small audiences for the two dress rehearsals before she had to come home.

“The silver lining is that I now have time to create. I have written two drafts of two different plays and learned how to produce my own music album,” she said.

Jenna plans to move to Toronto when COVID restrictions are lifted and is writing, producing, and performing a three-person show.

“It is a show that presents multiple characters but not always through narrative.” 

A very different Jenna has emerged from her training.

The two girls have not been beaten by this global complete shut-down of their beloved art, but have taken this time, to ponder, explore, hone their abilities and position themselves in New York and Toronto for the next chapter of their lives.

Nothing will stop them now.

For more information about Kelowna Actors Studio Academy, go to www.actorsstudioacademy.com

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.