8 hours Ago By Ben Waldman
The Winnipeg Studio Theatre has announced the appointment of a new creative leadership team, with Kara Joseph joining the company as artistic director-producer and Vinnie Alberto hired on as artistic associate. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * The Winnipeg Studio Theatre has announced the appointment of a new creative leadership team, with Kara Joseph joining the company as artistic director-producer and Vinnie Alberto hired on as artistic associate. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? The Winnipeg Studio Theatre has announced the appointment of a new creative leadership team, with Kara Joseph joining the company as artistic director-producer and Vinnie Alberto hired on as artistic associate.
Both originally from Winnipeg, Joseph, 29, and Alberto, 25, take the helm of the non-profit stage company, founded in 2006, as it enters its third decade, taking over from longtime leaders Erin McGrath and Brenda Gorlick, both of whom left the organization in 2024. When asked about her vision for the future of a company which has in recent years staged rousing productions of and last fall’s , Joseph’s mind appropriately wanders into song-and-dance territory. Supplied Kara Joseph “The song from , , has been my inspiration song as I think about what the vision for musical theatre at Winnipeg Studio Theatre is going to look like,” says Joseph, a training program manager at Creative Manitoba who’s been an assistant director at Rainbow Stage ( ) and a featured performer at MTYP ( ).
“Winnipeg Studio Theatre is really about bridging the gap for emerging artists onto professional stages and giving them opportunities to make their way forward in their careers. In a time where we’re not always able to be heard the way we want to be (as artists), my vision is really about being unapologetic in the way we create art and present art onstage,” says Joseph, who in 2023 won Prairie Theatre Exchange’s inaugural Cherry Prize for Arts Management. “ A graduate, with honours, of Sheridan College’s music theatre performance program, Alberto has performed in multiple Shaw Festival productions and local musicals, including Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s 2022 production of and Rainbow Stage’s Weekday Evenings Today’s must-read stories and a roundup of the day’s headlines, delivered every evening.
The opportunity to join the company was too good to pass up, says Alberto, a past winner of the Kayla Gordon Musical Theatre Award, named for the studio theatre’s founding artistic director. “This institution has been so integral for local emerging artists,” adds Alberto, who served last season as the associate producer of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, working alongside artistic director Dan Petrenko to learn the ropes. As BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) artists, both Joseph, a graduate of River East Collegiate, and Alberto, a Grant Park High School alum, say that providing opportunities for a representative roster of creative professionals both onstage and backstage is a major priority.
Supplied Vinnie Alberto In addition to producing annual musical productions and various entertainment programs, the Studio Theatre’s mandate has included a training program under StudioWorks Musical Theatre Academy umbrella, led by Gorlick. Alberto says that the company is in the process of developing a new in-house educational program that will be announced in the coming year, while Joseph says preliminary discussions are underway for upcoming productions and concert programming. ben.
[email protected] Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the . Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the while earning his degree at Ryerson University’s (now Toronto Metropolitan University’s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019.
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Thank you for your support. Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the . Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the while earning his degree at Ryerson University’s (now Toronto Metropolitan University’s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019.
. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and .
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism.
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