Lydia Kinasewich’s performances often leave her audience breathless — which is exactly what she intends.
“I just like being able to connect with the audience and to tell a story to the audience,” she says. “I really like having the audience captivated by what you are saying.”
The Grade 11 student has proved her skills multiple times, most recently at the British Columbian Performing Arts Festival in Kamloops where she won the Senior Speech Arts category and was awarded the Ian Graham Memorial Scholarship for the most outstanding performer in the Speech Arts Division for her performances.
Kinasewich competed as the 100 Mile Festival of the Arts representative after being awarded the Senior’s Aggregate and the Outstanding Achievement Awards for the 2017 local festival.
Her performances at the B.C. festival included a poem, a monologue, a sonnet, a short story by David Sedaris and a Shakespearean monologue from As You Like It for which she was also awarded a runner-up Shakespeare award.
The festival was held from May 28 to June 1 in Kamloops.
Kinasewich started performing speech arts when she was 6 after being unable to find a singing teacher.
She has competed at the provincial festival for the past four years and won the Intermediate division last year.
“The competition there, they were so talented and they also put so much effort into it so it was really nice seeing everyone have the passion for doing speech arts,” she says.
She says she was surprised to hear her name called as the winner.
“It was kind of shocking because I wasn’t expecting to win either time because everybody was so talented. It felt really good though because I’ve put a lot of effort into speech arts and I’ve done it for so many years. It was really rewarding.”
Ginny-Lou Alexander, her teacher, says Kinasewich’s success is well earned.
“Lydia has always been a really, really hard worker as far as speech arts goes and she is really dedicated to it and loves it,” she says.
Kinasewich was one of a number of students from the area to head to Kamloops for the festival.
“I always tell the kids when they go to provincials don’t count on winning or maybe even placing. The idea is you are the cream of the crop from your community, you are representing your community and good on you. You are already a winner before you leave the community if you’ve been selected to go to provincials,” says Alexander.
As she’s now won the highest level of speech arts in the province, Kinasewich is no longer able to compete at the provincial festival, however, she says she wants to continue with the performances as a hobby.
“I’ve definitely improved my public speaking skills and I feel a lot more confident being able to get up on stage because I’ve been doing it so long,” says Kinaswich.