RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award Winner - Isabel Kanaan

Описание: The RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards has recognized outstanding individuals for the past 11 years! Hear from one of our 2018 winner's Isabel Kanaan with her advice for new Canadians… Who will join the winners’ circle in 2019?

Vote now at canadianimmigrant.ca/rbctop25 by May 16, 2019.

Isabel Kanaan was doing live theatrical productions by age 10 in the Philippines. When she immigrated to Canada as a teenager in 2008, the budding thespian set her sights on film and TV. “People laughed when I said I wanted to be an actor in North America because it wasn’t a ‘real job,’” Kanaan says.

Today, the 26-year-old is making people laugh for real — she’s on CBC’s sketch comedy show Air Farce and is a member of the Canadian sketch troupe, the Sketchersons, performing on their weekly show Sunday Night Live. She also teaches and performs for young audiences with Second City.

“I worked hard, got into as many audition rooms as I could, built connections and am now a working actor,” Kanaan says, adding with a laugh, “With all that work, trust me, it is a ‘real job.’”

Beyond working hard, Kanaan also had to do a lot of soul searching. “I kept running away from who I was,” she admits. “Coming to Canada, I was taught to trick people into thinking I wasn’t an immigrant. It took doing improv shows every night for me to realize that I wasn’t being my true self. How can I perform and make the audience believe in a character’s truth if I didn’t believe in my own character?” she asks. “I decided to show people the truth. I started advocating for representation in the media as a person of colour, as queer and as an immigrant.”

She received rave reviews for her performance in the Filipino-Canadian film Ponytail, and is a core member of the Filipino-Canadian Carlos Bulosan Theatre in Toronto. She also starred in the LGBTQ-friendly series Haunted or Hoax, which won the NYC Webfest’s Audience Choice Award. Up next, she has a lead role in the immigration-themed Prairie Nurse, at Ontario’s Thousand Island Playhouse in August 2018.

“Now, in whatever project I do, I always pay homage to my heritage, my culture and my truth.”