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Culture Stage Theatre

Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund Award recipients announced

After more than two years of pandemic closures, live theatre has finally returned to Toronto. No one would have celebrated that fact more than Jon Kaplan, NOW’s beloved long-time theatre writer, who passed away in 2017. So it’s fitting that the annual Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund Awards, launched in his name in 2019, be announced today, on what would have been his 75th birthday.

This year’s recipients are: Jasmine Chen, who receives the Canadian Stage Performer Award (worth $5,000); Julie Phan, who receives the Young Canadian Playwright Award ($5,000); and Tuna Gümeli, who takes home the Graduating Student Award ($2,500).

“This year we increased our theatre award amounts, acknowledging the particular challenges of theatre making during a pandemic,” says Don Cole, Jon’s husband and the president of the Legacy Fund, in a press release.

Chen is a multi-talented artist who acts, directs, writes and teaches; her recent performing credits include the title role in Young People’s Theatre’s Antigone and part of the ensemble in Stratford Festival’s Bakkhai.

Phan is currently finishing her final year as a playwrighting student at the National Theatre School, and is developing a solo show under Buddies in Bad Times’ seeding work initiative. One of her best-known works is Fine China, presented at the 2018 Fringe Toronto and then remounted as part of a fu-GEN double bill in 2019.

Gümeli recently graduated from the Department of Theatre, School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, York University. An actor and creator, he’s performed in Theatre@York productions of Branden Jacob-Jenkins’s Everybody (directed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster) and Christopher Chen’s The Late Wedding (directed by Jamie Robinson). He also took part in Theatre@York’s playGround festival as an actor and writer/director.

Previous JKLFA recipients include Ka Kei Jeff Ho (2020), whose Iphigenia And The Furies (On Taurian Land) was recently remounted digitally for Theatre Passe Muraille with 2021 winner Virgilia Griffith, who also starred in Stratford’s Serving Elizabeth last year. 2021 winner athena trinh recently starred in ARC/Crow’s Theatre’s Gloria. And 2000 recipient Justin Miller’s new show Distant Early Warning opens this week at Buddies in Bad Times.

Besides the annual awards, the JKLF has supported emerging artist programs at the Toronto Fringe, Intermission Magazine and the Paprika Festival. It’s also made a substantial gift to the Actors Fund of Canada to reach artists across Canada.

“It has been a pleasure to support local Toronto theatre makers this year through our low-barrier community grants for anything from keeping the lights on, to making up COVID-related shortfalls, or getting a new show off the ground,” says Cole.

Learn more about the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund Awards here.

@glennsumi

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