Chris Worsnop - Comedy Category

In his secret life, separate from his career as a curriculum specialist in Ontario public education, Chris has been connected with community theatre for 50+ years. He made his debut in a 1955 church youth club play in Blackpool, Lancashire. It is now 40 years since he played his first adult role with Ottawa’s Phoenix Players.

Chris has done almost everything theatrical in that 40 year time period, including adjudicating Sears Festival and community theatre productions for 30+ years. He has played all kinds of roles on stage in both dramatic and musical productions. He has directed, written scripts, as well as organizing and hosting festivals and presenting play-polishing workshops.

He is no stranger to designing and operating sound and lighting and has often rolled up his sleeves for the often unsung theatrical roles of set load-ins and strikes, building and painting sets, props, costuming and set dressing, as well as programme design.

He is the proud winner of two acting Theas, and has awards also from EODL and (somewhere) one from that 1955 performance in Blackpool. His academic qualifications include 2 undergraduate and 2 masters degrees in literature, film & media, and curriculum.

As an adjudicator he is as interested in being a listener and a learner as in being a speaker and teacher, and looks forward to exploring the challenges and triumphs of community theatre’s magic with ACT-CO Festival community theatre groups.

 

Ron Cameron - Musical Category

For over 33 years, Ron Cameron-Lewis has taught acting and directed shows for the Music Theatre Department at Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Oakville. As well, he teaches and directs for the joint Sheridan/UTM Theatre and Drama Studies program since its inception 16 years ago. He directed Theatre Erindale's smash hit Thirteen Hands which will be remounted in March 2007 at Hart House Theatre. Other recent credits include Sweet Charity for Theatre Sheridan and Pride's Crossing for Burl-Oak Theatre Group.

Ron has worked at the Charlottetown Festival, Huron Country Playhouse, Lighthouse Festival Theatre and the Arts & Culture Centre in St. John's. His textbook on acting technique Acting Skills for Life is in its third edition, published by The Dundurn Group. It features acting exercises, improvisations, theory and excerpts from Canadian plays. He has worked extensively as production consultant and workshop leader with many community theatre groups throughout Ontario.

This is Mr. Cameron-Lewis' seventh time adjudicating for ACT-CO, and he has also covered the EODL and WODL festivals three times each and the Theatre Ontario Festival four times. In addition to his work throughout Ontario, he has adjudicated many times in the USA at state, regional and national levels of competition from Massachusetts to Texas. He stopped counting at 2,000 productions.

Graduating as a history major from the University of Western Ontario, Mr. Cameron-Lewis trained in theatre at the Banff Centre, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (England) and the University of London.

He received the President's Award of Excellence at Sheridan and was awarded the 2004 Maggie Bassett Award by Theatre Ontario for his sustained contribution to theatre in Ontario.

Laurel Smith - Drama Category

Laurel is a theatre director, playwright, producer and performer with a degree in music and opera performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, an MBA in Arts and Media Administration from York University (graduating on the Dean's List) and theatre training at the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Drama Studio in London. She is currently an MA candidate at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama at University of Toronto.

Laurel has adjudicated for the Mississauga Arts Awards and for the Meadowvale Music Theatre Awards, and this season will be adjudicating the London One-Act Play Festival in May 2006. Favourite directing credits include: Hands - The Playwrights Guild of Canada Women Playwrights conference; The Mikado - Clarkson Music Theatre (60th anniversary production - numerous ACTCO nominations and award for best set design); My Fair Lady - City Centre Productions (Audience Choice Award, Meadowvale Music Theatre Awards); The Wager - Lost Carnival Productions; The Pirates of Penzance - Clarkson Musical Theatre (Adjudicators Award for Best Direction, Meadowvale Music Theatre Awards); The Gondoliers - Clarkson Musical Theatre; Little Shop of Horrors and Wrong Turn at Lungfish - Gryphon Theatre.

For three years, Laurel was Producer of Modern Times Stage Company, a professional Persian-Canadian theatre company based in Toronto. Currently, Laurel is the Artistic Producer of Burning Passions Theatre, producing and directing the premiere of Fireweeds: Women of the Yukon in 2000, followed by a variety of youth, community and professional theatre projects. Next season the company will be developing and producing one of Laurel's original scripts, The Crush of Beauty. Another of her plays, The Reluctant Dragon, recently workshopped with Carousel Players in St. Catharines, will also be developed by the company for the TYA market.