Production awarded Best Director, Best Visual Production, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and two Adjudicator Awards for Acting
SUDBURY—The Gore Bay Theatre cast and crew came home from the QUONTA Northern Ontario Theatre Festival with a wheelbarrow full of awards for their directing and acting performances as well as stage and lighting design.
The “Gore Bay Theatre production kept us spellbound for an hour and 40 minutes with brilliant acting, strong set and lighting design for a magical evening of theatre,” said adjudicator Rita Huschka in her remarks on the Gore Bay Theatre production of ‘Kindertransport.’
“We got the most awards of any production at the festival,” said a jubilant Walter Maskel, who co-directed ‘Kindertransport’ with Andrea Emmerton. Mr. Maskel had high praise for this year’s QUONTA hosts, noting that “everything went very smoothly.”
Mr. Maskel and Ms. Emmerton won Best Director and Best Visual Production.
Newcomer Jack Clark took home the Best Supporting Actor award for his outstanding work filling five male roles ranging from the jocular to the sinister and back again, while Gore Bay veteran Tara Bernatchez won Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a tormented mother who has to give up her daughter, not once but twice.
Kayla Greenman, who played Eva, the young girl torn from her family in Nazi dominated Germany to grow up in an English family, later turning her back on her past and her biological mother and Shannon McMullan, who played the older Eva (now calling herself Evelynn) each received Adjudicator’s Awards for Acting.
The cast also received a number of award nominations, including Best Supporting Actress for Lori Evans, who played the role of the English mother who takes the young Jewish girl, and Best Lead Actress for Ms. Greenman. The production was also nominated for Best Technical Achievement.
Those who missed the QUONTA performances of ‘Kindertransport’ and the three performances held earlier this month in Gore Bay will get another opportunity in early July, when the production will form part of this year’s Gore Bay Theatre summer productions. The summer lineup will also include Norm Foster’s ‘Old Love.’
