Another Lampman student is pursuing a life on the stage.
The Mercury recently recounted Grade 10 student Sam Paxman's rise in theatre, ignoring gender by playing boys, and heading to Stratford to advance her technique by studying Shakespeare.
Maya Branyik-Thornton is a graduating student and was perhaps destined for a life of theatre as the daughter of Christine Branyik-Thornton, Lampman's drama teacher, who had a background in the theatre world before turning to teaching.
Maya grew up steeped in theatre, soaking up the flavours and aromas that built the foundation necessary to get inside the head and the heart of a character. As her mother puts it, she can focus on the "germ" of the character.
Throughout high school, Maya's summers included trips for workshops rather than vacations, attending Stratford for two consecutive years for training in the Shakespearean arts as well as workshops in New York. She is going to further her development in the fall when she goes off to the University of Alberta to study theatre full time.
The Grade 12 student left the school a little before classes ended, when she took off to Victoria. She has a contract with the Victoria Shakespeare Society to play Mariana in the Bard of Avon's Measure for Measure. Those performances will be held in mid-August before she heads off to school. While she has studied some Shakespeare, this will be the first time she is a player in a full-length Shakespearean production.
Maya is a bit of a Shakespeare buff, and that love may have bloomed during her time in Stratford during those two summers. Heading to Victoria as an actor in one of his comedies, she landed the role by performing a monologue from Hamlet, which she sent in as her audition tape.
She noted many teenagers studying his works in high school, an annual necessity, find the material unattainable. During her time in Stratford she was taught how to decode the early modern English.
"It's like a different language, learning how to speak it is really cool. He really knew what he was doing," she said of Shakespeare.
She wants Shakespeare to be experienced outside of the classroom at every opportunity.
"It's meant to be seen and not read in a classroom," she said, and more exposure to the live theatre productions of Shakespeare's work may help engage more students in the material. "It's about making it understandable to your audience."
Maya got an early start in theatre, and had a part in the Missoula Children's Theatre, which comes to Estevan annually to engage local youth in a theatre production. She has since been on stage for 15 shows by her count. She is also an accomplished dancer and graduate of Estevan's Drewitz School of Dance.
Maya was one half of Lampman School's production of Boy Meets Girl: A Young Love Story, which was a two-person play featuring Sam and her. They performed it at the provincial drama festival in Regina in May, and both students received one of the top four acting honours.
"There's something really intimate and special about doing just a two-hander," Maya said. "We actually went to a workshop in Grand Forks and we got to really focus on our characters a lot. There's something magical about just two people working on a show together. You get really close and start to know each other really well."
Her mother Christine was directing the pair, so the three spent a lot of time together digging into the two characters of Sam and Katie.
"I think the show turned out really well. It was all about our relationship. The relationship of the characters was the strong point. It wasn't about memorizing lines or I'm walking here and I'm walking there. We were just telling a story."
When she begins at the U of A in Edmonton, she will have a year of general studies before moving into the acting program. To keep in performance shape she said she'll be finding parts in the flourishing theatre scene in the city.
"The first year I'm going to get my bearings about university. I'm probably going to look for community plays or volunteer for film studies stuff to be acting in. There will be a lot of shows that I can work on. Edmonton has great theatre going on," she said, noting the popularity of the Fringe Festival. "It's happening in Edmonton. Lots of people don't know that, but it's happening in Edmonton."
She will need to audition after her first year in order to be accepted into the 12-person theatre program.
Maya is also a big advocate of live theatre, encouraging young people who have a passion for it to pursue with all their heart.
"I want all the kids doing theatre in small communities to know that it is possible to branch out and go do theatre all around Canada," she said. "They should really follow it and go for it, because if you really love it, that's what you should be doing."
