No mistaking Silverman's contribution to performing arts

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Silverman is introduced as one of the recipients of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards in Toronto Thursday. (FRANK GUNN / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

When Leslee Silverman received a call two months ago about the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement she thought they were confirming a person she nominated.

She heard the caller wrong, though -- it was her who would be receiving the award for her 30 years as artistic director of Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

"I thought it was a mistake, I thought it was someone I nominated and that's what I said when I was on the phone: 'I can't remember, who did I nominate? Please help me,' and they said no, it's you," Silverman recalls with a laugh over the phone from Toronto during a luncheon atop the CN Tower with fellow award recipients and other members of the Canadian arts community.

Silverman will receive the award in Ottawa on May 14 along with actor William Shatner, Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore, Quebec humorist Yvon Deschamps, dance artist Margie Gillis and theatre creator Paul Thompson, it was announced Thursday. The Governor General's Performing Arts Awards are the country's most prestigious performing arts honour.

Silverman got her start with MTYP in 1982 when she became artistic director of the amateur theatre troupe Actors' Showcase. The troupe was reconfigured as MTYP and turned its attention towards theatre aimed at younger audiences.

Today MTYP programs a full season of shows from local, national and international companies, conducts annual provincial tours, operates a year-round theatre school and offers specific teenage and aboriginal programming.

Over the years Silverman has directed 80 shows herself and in 1999 spearheaded the construction of MTYP's own performance facility -- the Canwest Performing Arts Centre -- at The Forks.

"Winnipeg is a place where artists are allowed to make their own blueprints because there isn't anything other than your instincts to carve out your beliefs. It's a special place; a magical place. That's why you get people like Guy Maddin and Neil Young and Evelyn Hart. No one said you can't do a theatre for children at The Forks, so we did," she says.

Meanwhile, dance legend Hart, the former principal dancer of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, says she will mentor Heather Ogden, principal dancer of the National Ballet of Canada, through the 2011 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards Mentorship Program. The program allows past recipients of the Governor General's Performing Arts Award to offer creative guidance to another artist in mid-career.

At the press conference it was also announced that Academy Award-nominated Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve will receive a National Arts Centre award for exceptional achievement over the past year. His wrenching drama Incendies was nominated for a best foreign-language Oscar but lost out to Denmark's In a Better World.

The 43-year-old director, whose acclaimed body of work includes Polytechnique, and Maelstrom, described the honour as particularly beautiful and meaningful because it is directly linked to art.

"It was a long process for me to call myself an artist because to be an artist is something that is a huge responsibility," he said. "I think that I'm slowly, slowly becoming an artist.... When I present myself I don't see myself as an artist. I don't know why it (means) something for me that is too big but one day, maybe when I'm going to be old, I will be able to call myself an artist."

Past recipients of the performing arts award include Robert Lepage, Robbie Robertson, Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Stompin' Tom Connors.

-- Canadian Press/Staff

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 4, 2011 D2