A POWERFUL actor-director who gave up her day job to get behind a new theatrical enterprise in Canberra was presented with the Helen Tsongas Award for excellence in acting by Canberra Theatre director Alex Budd at the ACT Arts Awards tonight (November 22).

Karen Vickery was singled out by the Canberra Critics Circle for a remarkable year of acting, especially for her performances as Jaques in Lakespeare’s “As You Like It”, as the older woman in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” for ACT Hub and as the narrator in “Urinetown: The Musical” for Heart Strings Theatre Company. 

A graduate in acting and a long-time staff member at the National Institute of Dramatic Art with a degree from the University of Melbourne behind her, Vickery has made herself well-known in the Canberra acting scene since coming to Canberra in 2011 to join the National Portrait Gallery as director of access and learning.

She left the NPG in April this year to concentrate on her acting and on the challenges presented at the new ACT Hub in Kingston, conceived during the covid lockdown when she and the directors of three other theatre companies joined forces to secure the future of serious theatre practice in Canberra. 

A performing artist at the very height of her powers, Vickery, the judges believe, takes hold of the mature parts presented to her now and interprets them with a great deal of complexity and sophistication.

An accomplished Russian linguist who has translated plays by Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky into hotly sought-after English-language playscripts, she also spent many years working as a jobbing actor for TV series, including “All Saints” and “A Country Practice” (three times in three different roles) and in stage dramas, once playing 13 characters in the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of “Nicholas Nickleby”. 

Moving to Canberra to pursue her new career, she found the Portrait Gallery responsive to the power of dance and theatre in interpreting portraiture and hosting many performances and a celebration of playwright Ray Lawler’s “The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll” in its 60th year, which she later directed at The Q. 

She also founded the project “In their own words,” where poems or literature pertaining to portraits are read in the galleries.

But Vickery never abandoned her love of treading the boards and, as a lead actor with Canberra Rep (her first foray into community theatre), then as actor-director with Everyman Theatre, Pigeonhole Theatre and her own newly formed Chaika (Russian for “seagull”) Theatre, she became a driving force in the Canberra theatre scene and a model to younger actors.

The late Helen Tsongas, who would have been 44 in November this year, was a dramatic actor memorable for tragic roles who was equally admired for her finely-tuned comic roles in comedy. She worked at arts ACT for many years and then moved to the then Commonwealth Office for the Arts.

She died with her husband in a motorcycle accident shortly after their marriage and her family has established this award in her memory. 

The Helen Tsongas award takes the form of a cheque to the value of $1000 and a certificate going to the best Canberra actor of the year, with no restrictions on age or gender, as judged by the theatre panel of the Canberra Critics Circle.