ROSEMARY NOWICKI found her poetic voice after she closed a successful contemporary furniture store in Vancouver in 2013. The former co-owner of entreNous, with partners Karen Nordin and Espe Thorleifson, says what she misses most after 23 years in their business is “having a perfectly beautiful space to go to every day.”
A UBC English lit graduate before venturing into business, Rosemary had always been interested in and dabbled with words and language. It was on Vancouver’s Café Montmarte’s Thundering Word open mic stage that Rosemary first performed her poetic expression.
Since then, she has both hosted and performed with Pandora’s Collective at the Jewish Community Centre’s Zack Gallery and Poetic Pairings at the Britannia Community Centre.
“My poetry is informal and accessible,” she says, “and while it encourages my creative energy, writing poetry has made me a happier person.”
WANDA NOWICKI, Rosemary’s younger sister, first pursued her creativity with a scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts, and then Los Angeles’ Strasbourg Institute, to study acting. While doing cartoon voices and voice-overs, she found her own singing voice, which framed her creative work for the next 20 years as a lead singer with various supporting bands and ensembles.
While also working as a figure drawing model, “a job you can take anywhere,” it was when Wanda moved back to Canada and settled in Gibsons, BC, that she made her way back to her first love of acting.
With co-producer and fellow local actor Janet Hodgkinson, the two created “Off the Page,” a community-based play-reading series that engages them and other actors and playwrights in their culturally vibrant seaside community.
Former Vancouver and now Gibson’s playwright David King’s Lifeskills play and his seasonal Comfort and Joy have both been successfully play-read through Off the Page’s events at the Gibson’s Heritage Playhouse.
A solid base of engaged theatre goers attends by donation.
“The writing is good; the acting is good, and the audiences love it,” says Wanda enthusiastically as she and Janet set up the 2020 spring programme.
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Hooray for these beautiful talented women! Having attended performances of both I highly recommend searching them out.