ACTRESS DIONISIO ‘DREAMING FOR A LIVING’
‘Reluctant artist’ says the stage was a calling she couldn’t resist
Ma-Anne Dionisio’s mother calls her daughter a reluctant artist.
Though she has graced stages around the world 4or more than two decades with her luminescent beauty and dynamic voice, Dionisio insists she still hasn’t actually decided to be an artist.
“I didn’t pursue this career, it pursued me,” says Dionisio, who stars as Martha the housemaid in Theatre Calgary’s production o4 The Secret Garden, a musical that runs 4rom April 17 to May 19 in the Arts Commons’ Max Bell Theatre.
Dionisio, the middle child o4 hve sisters, had just moved to Canada 4rom the Philippines when she won a leading role in Experience Canada, a touring musical that celebrated Canada’s 125th anniversary.
At the same time, casting sessions were underway in Toronto 4or the hrst Canadian production o4 Miss Saigon.
“Someone in the casting department saw a video o4 Experience Canada and though I would be per4ect 4or the role o4 Kim. They kept iying me into Toronto to audition until they hnally ogered me the role,” recalls Dionisio, who says she had no idea what the theatre world was all about.
“The only live play I’d seen was Les Miz and we saw that 4rom the top balcony. It was a world I couldn’t possibly have imagined mysel4 in.
“Miss Saigon took up almost nine years o4 my li4e.
“... I was a good Catholic Philippine girl. I was studying to be a dentist because I wanted to help people.
“Though theatre was not the path I had set 4or mysel4, I consider it a blessing. I have met some o4 the most talented, wonder4ul people imaginable, and getting to help create something time and time again is like dreaming 4or a living.
“For almost 25 years I have been in a state o4 dreamland.”
Dionisio says when she was a small child she thought she was an angel who was meant to be a healer.
“I 4ound that calling in the theatre because theatre is a 4orm o4 healing. People come to the theatre to escape and to dream. I4 we do our jobs properly, they leave enriched and that’s what healing is all about.”
The Secret Garden is based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 young adult novel about Mary Lennox, a 10-year-old girl born and living in India who is orphaned during a cholera epidemic. Mary is sent to live with her uncle in Yorkshire.
Her exotic home o4 India is replaced by a dreary, haunted house where Mary ’s uncle Archibald Craven still mourns the death o4 his wi4e Lily and treats his son Colin as an invalid.
Housemaid Martha and her brother Dickon intercede, leading Mary and Colin to the door to Lily ’s once beauti4ul garden. They bring the garden and everyone in the household back to vibrant li4e.
“I see Martha and her brother Dickon as magical beings,” Dionisio says.
“They touch people in a way that makes them better people. In that dreary Yorkshire house, Martha and Dickon are the sources o4 light. When Mary and Colin hnd each other and the garden and overcome their animosity, they become like Martha and Dickon.
“For Mary and Colin and the audience, the musical is about uncovering something and letting it grow. The garden is the symbol o4 possibility and hope.”
Dionisio admits she never read The Secret Garden as a child, though as an adult, she has seen a production o4 the musical in Australia.
“I read books like Jane Eyre and Nancy Drew but missed out on The Secret Garden,” she says.
“When I was ogered the role, I immediately read the novel to hnd out who Martha was. She’s a generous, authentic person who wears her heart on her sleeve.
“It would be too simple to say she has empathy. It’s much more than that. She innately knows what people need to achieve their potential. That makes her special.”
Dionisio says she hopes she shares some o4 these attributes with Martha and also the woman’s play4ulness.
“I’d like to think I’m play4ul. That’s a quality that makes other people happy when they are around you.”
She says the major digerence between her and Martha is that “she’s young and I’m older. My children this year will be 20, 14 and 12, but the magic o4 theatre is that you can be asked to play a character younger or older than yoursel4.”
Dionisio says all three o4 her children are musically inclined, but her 14-year-old son is “insanely musical.”
“He taught himsel4 to play the iute and he can go to a movie and then come home and start playing some o4 the score,” she says.
This is Dionisio’s 4irst stage appearance in Calgary and she acknowledges she owes it all to Theatre Calgary’s new artistic director, Stagord Arima, whom she met while per4orming in Miss Saigon in Toronto.
“Stagord was on the stage management team. He was so young and so enthusiastic, and unlike me, he knew he wanted to be an artist.
“He directed me in Miss Saigon in Cali4ornia and in Sunhsh in New York, so when he ogered me the opportunity to be in the hrst musical he was planning to direct in Calgary, I took that as an honour.”
For tickets to Theatre Calgary’s The Secret Garden, call 403-2947447 or visit theatrecalgary.com.
I found that calling in the theatre because theatre is a form of healing. People come to the theatre to escape and to dream.