Youmelle Dan

Article by Lois Ann Baker,
Cornwall Standard-Freeholder
November 16, 2015

Jenny Dagenais, Patricia Lloyd, Stéphanie Carriere and Dan Youmelle at the Eastern Ontario Drama League One-Act Play Festival in Haliburton. Carrière won best supporting actress for her portrayal of Marie Barrett in the play Relative Strangers.

Next stop, the Academy Awards?

Well, maybe not, but winning the award as best supporting actress at the Eastern Ontario Drama League is certainly a step in the right direction.

Vagabond Theatre once again entered the One-Act Play Festival in Haliburton recently and its supporting actress, Stéphanie Carrière, won the Mae Carmichael Award for Acting for her part in Relative Strangers, the theatre company's submission.

While Carrière was the only one to walk away with an award, three other members of the troupe were nominated for their contribution to the play.

Jenny Dagenais was nominated for play direction. The first-time director was nominated for the Academy Theatre Foundation Award for Best Director.

Patricia Lloyd, a veteran with the theatre company, was nominated for the Pauline Grant Award for Acting for playing lead Marie Harvey in the play.

Dan Youmelle was nominated for the Ottawa Little Theatre Award for Best Production.

Vagabond Theatre has been around for over 30 years and has entered the festival seven times since 2002, winning six awards.

"There are nine plays over the weekend and a total of 14 awards," said Youmelle.

He joked they wouldn't have won anything for set decoration this year because the set consisted of two airline seats and a flight attendant's cart.

"Some of the sets are not overly elaborate because you only have five minutes to set up and five minutes to tear down," he said. "And it's timed, they have two people with a stopwatch."

Each play can only run for between 20 minutes and one hour. Anything more or less gets disqualified.

"Ours ran about 32 minutes, so we were fine," said. Youmelle.

In each of the 14 categories, between two and four people can be nominated depending on the adjudicator.

Youmelle said he was shocked when his name was announced as a nominee because of the simplicity of the set. He said he considered the award fairly prestigious because of the vastness of the territory it covers. There are 29 theatre groups in the EODL area from Cornwall to Peterborough and Haliburton to Renfrew.

Because only nine plays get accepted, Youmelle said they have to make sure they apply early enough to be considered.

"They also read all the plays so if they don't think it's an appropriate play for the festival, it won't be accepted," he said.

Vagabond Theatre plans on submitting a play again next year when the festival will be held in Perth, a little closer to home.