The Syd & Shirley Banks Prize generously provides two emerging musical theatre artists the opportunity to advance their careers through a $1,000 cash award as well as professional mentorship and exposure throughout our season. Join winners past and present as they build a career in Canadian musical theatre!
Category: Banks Prize
Catching up with the 2015/2016 Banks Prize Winners
The Banks Prize is an annual prize awarded to two up-and-coming Canadian musical theatre performers, one man and one woman, who receive $1,000 and a year of mentorship and performance opportunities in the Acting Up Stage Company season. We caught up with the 2015/2016 winners, Colin Simmons & Brittany Banks and chatted about their experience. More
Spread A Little Joy was a huge success!
This year’s Banks Prize winners finally took to the Berkeley Street Theatre stage to show off the reasons Acting Up Stage chose them as two up and coming musical theatre performers to watch. In Spread A Little Joy, directed by Ari Weinberg and music directed by Adam White, Alessia Lupiano and Graham Scott Fleming showed off their skills with a challenging set of 12 musical theatre songs and one encore (that would sound familiar to you, if you were at the past UnCovered concert!). It was a huge success, and Acting Up Stage couldn’t be prouder of these two stars. Check out the night in the pictures and tracklist below! More
Banks Prize winners prepare for Spread A Little Joy
We should all be so lucky as to have Alessia Lupiano and Graham Scott Fleming in Toronto, if not for their astounding musical theatre talent but for their optimism and bright demeanor. Spread A Little Joy is the name of their upcoming cabaret, with director Ari Weinberg and musical director Adam White, this Sunday, March 1 at 8 p.m. Produced by Acting Up Stage Company to showcase this year’s Banks Prize winners, Lupiano and Fleming will do just that with their curated evening of songs and stories. More
Alessia Lupiano: My Banks Prize experience so far…
Now that rehearsals have begun for The Wild Party, we’re checking in with this year’s Banks Prize recipients to see how their development into musical theatre superstars is going… More
Dana Jean Phoenix’s Triple Threat
This past week, we opened the final show of our tenth anniversary season: our reimagined revival of our hit 2007 production of Elegies: A Song Cycle. But as the Elegies cast continues to astound every night, our Banks Prize winners are putting the finishing touches on their cabaret, Cabaret Sauvignon. Before they perform on March 30 and 31, we asked them what makes their inner theatre geek sing: here’s what Dana Jean Phoenix had to say.
What musical’s score will you always remember?
Hedwig and the Angry Inch for its raw energy and authentic rock score written by Stephen Trask. I think ‘Midnight Radio,’ ‘Origin of Love’ and ‘Wicked Little Town’ are up there with the best glam-rock ballads of all time. Anything Kurt Weill, or Cole Porter is also a sure-fire way to make my heart flutter. .