ENCORE ARTS
Career Stages
Sandy Bremer has gone from treading the boards to teaching BY JORDAN BRADLEY
an organization dedicated to bringing arts education to nine public school districts in the area. “It’s an honor, of course,” she says.
Brian Powers
From bean counter to Broadway tours
I
f you ask Sandy Bremer how she felt about receiving the Community Medal of Arts Award for 2020, she will tell you just how horrified she was — not at the award itself, which she was honored by, but at the thought of having to get up in front of a group of people and speak. “I was afraid that I'd have to say something in front of people,” says the 60–year–old actor/director/choreographer/teacher whose career has been all about standing up in front of people. How’s that again? “When you perform, you play somebody else and you're reading lines written by somebody. You're completely different,”
Bremer grew up in Portage and attended Western Michigan University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in accounting, of all things. After graduating, she worked for First National Bank and did community theater at the Civic and the New Vic. "Sandy was the performer in Kalamazoo in the 1980s," says Janet Gover, former marketing director for the Civic and an actress who performed with Bremer many times. When Bremer auditioned and won the role of Marty in a production of Grease by Tibbits Summer Theatre in Coldwater in 1988 (Gover was alongside her, playing Cha–Cha), it became the catalyst for Bremer to pursue theater work full time. “Janet and I had a blast in that show. I really was over the nine to five and the
Above: Bremer in the dressing room at the Civic Theatre. Right: Bremer performing in a national tour of Sweet Charity.
Bremer explains. “When teaching, you're teaching in front of people about something else. Nothing's focused on yourself.” But if there has been one thing positive from the Covid–19 pandemic for Bremer, it was that she received the award via a Zoom meeting. Bremer was awarded the Community Medal of Arts Award for her dedication to teaching and directing in the Kalamazoo arts community, having worked with Farmers Alley Theatre and the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre and as a teacher with Education for the Arts,
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