Page 77 - 08-Nov-Dec-2024

JENELLE SLYWKA
MANAGER OF OUTREACH SERVICES, BOYLE STREET COMMUNITY SERVICES AGE 39
Bearing a 30-pound backpack filled with essentials, Jennelle Slywka connects with our city’s houseless population, even in extreme temperatures.
Slywka was inspired by her collaborative experiences with front front-line workers at the beginning of the COVID-19 pan- demic, when her Boyle Street Community Services team was often the sole link to critical services. Practitioners and workers visited folks in the river valley and brought them medicine, food, checked in and did paperwork.
“It was so cool to see everyone come together, and we would go visit people right in the river valley if that’s where they were safely isolating to bring whatever was needed,” Slywka says. “It’s our ideal way of reaching people and we all just rose up and did it so well.”
As the manager of outreach for Boyle Street Community Services, she now mentors other outreach case workers, and works hard to instill her values of inclusion, dignity and empathy in her team. She’s all about community and bringing everyone into the community with joy and humour. Regardless of their situation, “we deal with challenges, but we laugh a lot too. That’s how people connect.”
— LAUREN KALINOWSKI
SHEINY SATANOVE
MANAGING DIRECTOR, PUNCTUATE! THEATRE
AGE 36
Whether she’s touring across the country with the award-winning show, First Métis
In her first year as an undergrad- uate at the University of Alberta, a group of friends came to her want- ing to put on a showing of The End of Civilization, by George F. Walker, at the Fringe.
“I was like, ‘OK, well, let’s all learn together.’”
Today, Satanove is the managing director of Punctuate! Theatre — the same name she pencilled in for her group’s first Fringe show. While the company has grown and toured across the country, for Satanove, there’s nothing better than seeing Edmonton artists at work.
“When all of the elements really work, when they all come together, when you’ve got a good script and great actors and a great director and great designers, there’s a cer- tain kind of magic.”
— LIAM NEWBIGGING
Man of Odesa, or helping form the largest Indigenous playwriting unit in Canada with Pemmican Collective, Sheiny Satanove is all about making jobs in theatre.
Growing up immersed in the Vancouver stage scene and seeing her family involved in community theatre, Satanove quickly learned that there was always a shortage of jobs for artists.
“I thought it was kind of sad. Everyone’s working so hard to book these jobs, but the jobs only exist if someone helps make them exist.”
But after she moved to Edmonton, it didn’t take long to put productions together.
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