“You cannot teach this stuff from a textbook,” says Valerie Stanois, who brings her singing, dancing and acting talents this summer to the Triple Threat Workshop at CityArts. “Finding those raw emotions — whether it’s love, sadness, jealousy — and bringing them onstage is something you just have to do.”
Valerie Stanois in We Will Rock You
A star of the Toronto production of We Will Rock You for the past two years, Stanois throws out that textbook when teaching in local schools including her alma mater, Wexford School for the Arts. Not only does she get to inspire younger people, especially those who never knew they could express themselves through art, her own creativity is enhanced by the process.
“As a performer you can never stop learning,” says Stanois. “The moment you stop you’re kinda dead. But there’s always that moment on stage when I find myself delivering a familiar line in a different way and it excites me.
“I’ve been blessed with the knowledge, skills and talent, so if I can pass that experience down to somebody else, it’s especially rewarding. I think everyone aspires to be a role model for somebody.”
Stanois was born into a family of performers — her grandfather started Toronto’s first Pan-Macedonian dance school, which is where her parents met, and later took over the operation. She was “mesmerized” by the first musical theatre she saw, Les Miserables, and started on the long track to develop such a career for herself. Musical theatre studies at Sheridan College gave her a taste of theory, but real practice was provided with stints on a few cruise ships: “I saw about 80 per cent of the world before I was 24.”
Breaking into bigger stages back home remained a goal, though, meaning she traded up from dinner theatre revues at Stage West — including a chance to fulfill a childhood ambition to play “Rizzo” in Grease — to swing duties at the Stratford Festival and a Toronto revival of Hair, where she was on-call to play any female part requiring an emergency fill-in.
Proper billing arrived in 2007, thanks to the musical based on the music of Queen, as its creator Ben Elton found her ideal for the role of “Oz” — the main female among the tribe forced to make their own musical instruments in a 24th century world where the traditional ones have been forbidden.
“What I learned from working with Ben is that if you’re not honest then you’re not going to be funny,” says Stanois. “If you plan a joke, then it will fall flat, because being truthful is what gets you the biggest laugh.”
Her own sense of humour got Stanois through the climb toward stardom, and as We Will Rock You winds down its run in Toronto, she wants to share the wisdom gained from the experience.
“For me, ‘I’ve paid my dues time after time’ means more than just a lyric from a Queen song.”
