Here is are our adjudicators for 2023:
Introducing Norene Morrow!
Norene Morrow is an actor, singer, and voice teacher who lives in West Kelowna. Although her training started out in music she has been very involved in theatre for many years and has been applying her speech arts training for the last five and a half years. She holds an ARCT in Speech Arts and Drama (Performance) from the Royal Conservatory, along with a Master and Bachelor of Music (Vocal Performance) from the Universities of Arizona and Manitoba, respectively.
As a result of having trained in both speech arts and vocal music, Ms. Morrow has found that each discipline complements and enriches the other when it comes to her approach to performing, teaching, and adjudicating. She has spent over 40 years as a singing teacher and choral conductor at various universities, colleges, and community music schools. She has also given workshops in poetry, public reading and speaking, and has coached numerous young actors for theatre auditions.
In 2022, Ms. Morrow directed Margaret Edson’s play, “Wit”, which garnered several awards at Theatre BC.s Okanagan Zone Festival in Oliver and the Mainstage Provincial Festival in Vernon. These included Best Production and Best Director. Her next project is to direct Shakespeare Kelowna’s summer production of “As You Like It”. When not directing, Ms. Morrow teaches singing and takes acting classes whenever she can. She also loves the research end of things, be that studying a new poem or preparing to direct a new play, because she firmly believes that you are never too old to keep learning.
Introducing Meg Peters!
Meg is so thrilled to be an adjudicator for this year’s festival. She’s a long-time speech arts student and lover of all things theatre, so there’s truly no place she’d rather be!
Meg performed in her first festival when she was seven years old, and from that moment on, she was hooked. Year after year, Meg competed and won in local and provincial festivals, and performed in plays with Shooting Stars Theatre. Additionally, Meg entered the professional theatre scene, performing several times with Theatre NorthWest. Some of her favourite roles include Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (SST) and the Dormouse, Executioner, and Cook in Alice and Wonderland (TNW).
In 2021, Meg passed her Grade 10 RCM exam with honours plus distinction, scoring the highest in BC. She has also completed five levels of speech arts theory, passing with honours on all her RCM exams. Six years ago, Meg entered the world of coaching and adjudicating, assistant coaching at Shine Speech Arts & Drama and adjudicating for numerous mini festivals for BC students throughout the years.
Currently, Meg attends the University of Victoria, studying English literature and Japanese. Speech arts studies have helped her immensely in post-secondary; a third of the works she read this year she had already encountered and studied through theory classes!
She wishes the best of luck to all festival participants, and very much looks forward to seeing everybody’s hard work. Have fun!