Ode to Joy

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This article was published 20/08/2021 (1892 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In her younger days in the Philippines, Joy Lazo put aside a desire to become a professional singer at the behest of her parents. Instead, she went to Manila’s University of Santo Tomas to get a degree in economics.

But the dream never faded. Her eventual husband, Ramon, supported her ambition, and she would become a professional singer in the 1970s. When she and Ramon came to Winnipeg in 1988, Joy would nurture that ambition in others, including at least one future Broadway star.

That, in a nutshell, is how Lazo, 70, came to be the recipient of an honorary Evie at this year’s Winnipeg Theatre Awards in the category of Theatre Educator. Lazo says she has always felt the need to share the gift of music, in addition to her and her husband’s need to help others.

“When we got married, we were inspired to work with young people, especially the troubled youth in our community,” Lazo says in an interview with the Free Press. “So we organized them into choirs and sports teams as an alternative against the streets.

“When we immigrated to Canada in 1988, the first thing we did in our Catholic church, when we found out that there was no youth choir, was volunteer to organize and work with the youth choir for about 12 years.

“And that’s where everything just started,” she says. “There were (performance) competitions in the community and a parent approached me to coach her child and the child won first prize and that was the start of it. It snowballed.”

Within a few years of arriving in Winnipeg, Lazo managed to get on stage herself, landing a role in the ensemble in Rainbow Stage’s 1994 production of Damn Yankees before taking the spotlight in the 1997 show South Pacific, where she got to perform the sublime Bali Hai number in the role of Bloody Mary.

“The director thought I was bloody right for the role,” Lazo says with a laugh. “It was such an inspiration to me.”

Lazo saw the stage as a conduit for would-be Filipino performers beyond the smaller birthday-wedding venues. “I found a bigger stage, and if I could do this at my age, why not them?”

She started the Highlights Performing Group, which not only taught students to collaborative skills, but to compete with others at auditions in the community.

“I invited more parents to get their kids into musical theatre and coaching with me. I was just a tool to kind of crack through the shells and let them out,” she says. “This went beyond a Filipino-community thing. These are mainstream talents.”

Indeed, Andrea Macasaet, who plays Anne Boleyn in the Broadway musical Six (which reopens on Sept. 17, after having been shut down by COVID in 2020), was one of Lazo’s students.

“She started with me when she was six years old, until high school,” says Lazo, who adds that two of her own three children, daughters Marides and Nena, followed in her footsteps at Rainbow Stage, eventually performing in major venues around the world. (Both daughters have played the role of Kim in Miss Saigon.)

“It was very important for me to let the kids go farther than the four walls of my basement where they took lessons,” Lazo says.

“I’ve already been feeling rewarded enough, just because I get to do what I feel really passionate about. I think, until my last day, if I have an opportunity to help and to mentor, I will still be doing it.”

The fifth annual Evie Awards will be broadcast on YouTube on Monday, Aug. 30, at 7 p.m.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing