The road that leads back to Ottawa
Aspiring actress wins role in the Wizard of Oz
Sometimes a yellow brick road leads to the Land of Oz and a realization of what really matters in life. For Emmanuelle Zeesman, it’s led from Ottawa to New York City and confirmation that she’s been on the right path the whole time.
Montreal-born, Ottawa-raised Zeesman plays Auntie Em in the upcoming touring production of The Wizard of Oz at the National Arts Centre, a new stage adaptation of the evergreen 1939 movie musical of the same name starring Judy Garland as Dorothy. That movie was based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Zeesman’s extended road trip that eventually led to her role as Auntie Em began when she left Ottawa for Toronto in 2011 with her husband-to-be, playwright David Hersh. Although the triple-threat singer/actor/dancer had built a solid stage reputation here, including work with A Company of Fools, gigs with the now-defunct Opera Lyra, and awards from both Capital Critics Circle and the Rideau Awards, she says there wasn’t enough professional musical theatre in Ottawa, “and for me, there’s nothing like musical theatre.”
Toronto lasted a couple of years. There were some touring gigs and trips back here for work, but “I never fully immersed myself in Toronto. I always had one foot there and one in Ottawa.” She also realized that working in musical theatre in Toronto meant extensive touring, not something she relished since she’d one day like to have children.
So New York, North America’s Mecca of theatre, musical and otherwise, was the only logical move. “I had no green card, no place to live. It was scary and exciting. We kind of freaked out in the car when we crossed the border,” she says.
She was also in for job-hunting culture shock. She’d come of performing age in Ottawa where auditioning meant sending in your résumé and then waiting for the phone to ring.
In New York, one method of landing work is to appear for open casting calls. But it took the newbie a couple of weeks to figure out the process. “I’d wind up being number 700 (on the list) because the audition starts at 10 a.m., but I didn’t realize people started lining up at 5.”
Unlike Ottawa, where pretty much everybody in theatre knows everybody else in theatre, the Big Apple is home to auditions that can sometimes be a brutally impersonal process. In what’s called “typing ” auditions, you walk into a room with 20 other hopefuls only to hear the director say “No. No. Yes. No,” based purely on the performers’ physical type.
Zeesman has also learned to brand herself when it comes to auditions. That means going for the kinds of characters that decision-makers perceive her playing well, even if the role isn’t always the one she hungers for. She says those roles include motherly and hard-working types like business professionals. “I have a strong jawline. People see that as hardworking,” she says.
Zeesman, 35, has navigated all this, landing a clutch of offBroadway contracts, doing some commercials and voice-overs, and avoiding the actor’s dreaded last resort: waiting tables to pay the rent. Most significantly, she’s won the role in The Wizard of Oz, which takes her through to mid2016.
Not only does the gig mean she needn’t worry about auditions or finances for a while, she also now has the chance to indulge in drawing and other hobbies instead of working non-stop. “David and I went tandem bike riding!” she says with a note of disbelief.
The Auntie Em that Zessman plays is in her 30s rather than the middle-aged woman we know from the film and from Baum’s book. But her personality remains the traditional hard-working one, and while she loves Dorothy her main concern at the beginning of the story is the trouble-plagued Kansas farm that she and her husband Henry are trying to save.
In this production, Zeesman is also the understudy for the larger role of the Wicked Witch of the West played by Shani Hadjian. Admits Zeesman with a laugh, “Shani is wonderful and one of my dearest friends, and at the same time wouldn’t it be a dream come true if …. I wouldn’t want her to be unwell, but maybe just a little bit tired in Ottawa one night?”