Emmanuelle and I are back in New York City after being away for more than a year! She’s in tech week for a production of Little Women in which she plays Marmee while I explore the Lower East Side, the neighbourhood we will live in for the next month. After this, we hit the road on another Broadway tour. Before we crept back to our NYC haunts we spent a month in Canada visiting family and friends. The pinnacle to our visit was a cast party we threw for our OCT Musical Theatre Production class. We spent over a year with some of them; directed and performed five different shows, and we had never ..read more

Instructors AL Connors and Emily Poulsen back in the OCT Studios. It was so exciting to be back in our fabulous studios at Carleton Dominion Chalmers this weekend! All of our parents and students were amazingly patient as we sorted through the new health protocols. It felt like a celebration, a homecoming. We filled the studios with laughter and fun. It was surprisingly normal. And also, extraordinary. Just as when we went online for the first time in April 2020, this shift back into the studios is not without its challenges. But it is incredibly rewarding, even with the limitations. As actor ..read more

Sixteen months ago, The Ottawa Children’s Theatre did a huge pivot. Like everyone else in the world, our lives were turned upside down by the pandemic. But we pooled our creative resources and stayed open, offering top-notch online acting and drama classes to young people aged 4 – 18. I was deeply impressed by the inventiveness of our instructors and the enthusiastic response of our students. The classes and camps that we offered were some of the very best that I have ever seen online or in-person! We all leapt in, learned beyond our dreams, and had a ton of fun. But we are all now longing to ..read more

In March, as we marked a year of online programs, I was in the process of trying to figure out what to plan for this summer at OCT. Last summer was the first summer OCT had done summer camps. We launched into running 17 online camps that were wildly creative and hugely fun. Everyone was thrilled to leap into online programming and our campers had a fabulous time. A year later, we are all weary of our isolation and our online lives. But I had to think carefully about whether we were ready to make the transition back to in-person programming. Would we be able to gather together this summer? Sma ..read more

By Nicholas Miller, Associate Director of the Ottawa Children's Theatre I vividly remember the winter open house weekend for OCT on March 7th and 8th, 2020. Many of us were starting to be aware of the reality of the epidemic stage of the coronavirus and the suggested distancing restrictions being made. These were not government mandated restrictions at the time; they were just recommendations. We realized in those moments of trying not to shake hands or accept a hug, that changing our behaviors was going to be very challenging. The theatre teachings of Jacques Lecoq teach us of the importance ..read more

As we approach the holidays I try to remember the moments in the year for which I can be grateful. And the times which emphatically stand out are the moments I had working on our Zoom musical productions; one in July and the other September through November. I would not have believed that such amazing, creative work could happen from a dozen little video boxes across the city and spanning the country. I had so many wonderful surprises from the work the cast of 11-14 year olds did. In the scenes, the young actors would look up, down, diagonally or across at one another and even though they wer ..read more

As I write this, we are heading into the last few weeks of our fall classes, wondering where the time has gone. Due to “the circumstances”, we ran a shorter semester this fall –– normally our sessions are 10-weeks long, but this year we are doing 8-week sessions. The shorter length was to accommodate the confusion of the start of the school year (remember those heady days in early September?). It really does feel like it has Zoomed by. I hear great things from all of the instructors about their classes. The feeling is so different from the classes we taught last spring, when we thought this wa ..read more

Classes at The Ottawa Children’s Theatre started up last weekend, and while I definitely miss our beautiful studios at Carleton Dominion Chalmers ,(check the article about OCT at CDCC), I am loving seeing so many children and young people in our virtual classes. I’ve discovered that online drama has different rules from online schooling. I keep reminding students to keep their microphones ON, instead of muted. I WANT to hear their voices and make some noise! I WANT their unique contributions. I WANT them up on their feet, bursting with energy. I’ve been searching out new materials that will wo ..read more

“A long time ago, in a green wooded valley which faced the blue sea, all of the birds got together for a meeting.” So began yesterday’s drama presentation of The Monarch of the Birds. The speaker was about 10 years old, a lively lad sitting alone in his bedroom. In attendance were nine other performers, John and I, and any number of parents, grandparents, friends and family—all of them in various conditions of lockdown. “Unfortunately, at that meeting, the birds all made their noises at the same time. Everyone wanted to talk, and no one wanted to listen.” Teaching and directing a play on Zoom ..read more

Dramatically Different: an interview with Amanda West Lewis in theHumm theHumm is reaching out to members of our Ottawa Valley community to ask how they are finding ways to use their gifts and skills in these challenging times. Today’s subject is Amanda West Lewis — actor, author, and founder of The Ottawa Children’s Theatre (OCT). We contacted her to find out how the OCT is rising to the challenge of providing creative instruction to kids during this time of social distancing. theHumm: You live in Brooke Valley but have been active in the Ottawa youth theatre scene for many years now. Are yo ..read more