Hard acts to follow The top man of ‘Top Girls’ wins alternate award

HARLEY DAVIS Reporter

@ht_davis

Seeing God can provoke thoughts of religion, but for Jon Michael Villagomez, it was directing. Villagomez, a directing award finalist was watching the movie Bruce Almighty when he found his future profession.

“I don’t know what it was about the movie, but I walked out of it realizing that it was something I could do and that I could be in a movie like that.”

Early on in his adolescence, Villagomez saw himself as a screen actor, in the movies or on television.

“When I was a young teenager, I started directing things,” Villagomez explained. “I used to see the theatre as a place to practice until I could do the real thing.”

His view of live theatre changed completely when he met Mark Sitco, a theatre instructor at Pierce College, who became his mentor in the arts.

“He was the first person to show me the power and potential of theatre in its own right,” Villagomez said.

Through high school, Villagomez didn’t focus on his academic studies, something he attributes to an indifferent attitude and took a year off school entirely after graduating in 2015.

“I told myself that my career didn’t really need a college education,” Villagomez began. “I had a dismissive perception of community college and their theatre programs in general.”

In 2016, Villagomez’s girlfriend, Alexa Maris was a year ahead of him in schooling and began attending Pierce College to study theatre arts. He joined her in the fall semester soon after.

“Alexa Maris, worked under Shaheen Vaaz and had a really positive experience, so I decided to try it the next semester,” Villagomez said.

“Since then I got hooked on the theatre program.”

Professor of theatre arts, Shaheen Vaaz recalls how she first met Villagomez in one of her classes.

“I first encountered Jon in beginning acting,” Vaaz said.

“He’s a very accomplished actor, and it was clear from the start.” Vaaz also recounted the path he took through the acting program at Pierce and his attitude in his studies and emphasized his willingness to take on challenges.

“He was very professional,”

Vaaz added. “He was one of the stronger students in the class.”

As a student at Pierce College, Villagomez has attended the Irene Ryan Awards program twice. His first attendance was as an actor and nominee for the award. Recently, he attended as both a member of a nominee production, “Top Girls”, and as a nominee for directing.

“KCACTF was a festival I was very honored to attend,” Villagomez said. “This year I went as Alexa’s partner because she was nominated, and I also went as a directing award nominee.”

During the run of ‘Top Girls’ at Pierce College in the fall semester of 2018, Villagomez took on the role of assistant director, under Vaaz.

“He was very proactive,” Vaaz said. “He was always ready to take notes or help with research.”

Sabrena Nomani, who played Gret and Angie in the “Top Girls” production, also had positive experiences with

Villagomez.

“We had this joke that he could put on a one-man show of ‘Top Girls’ because he actually memorized all the parts,” Nomani said. “We called him the other top girl, but he really was the top man.”

Vaaz was also impressed with his direction, noting that he was auditing the directing class, attending for a second time while the production was going on.

“Having been in class with me so much,” Vaaz said. “We spoke the same language and had the same vocabulary, so he could point things out for me very easily.”

When the production was nominated for an Irene Ryan award at the KCACTF festival, there was also an opening to submit a nominee for the directing awards program.

“I put his name forward,” Vaaz said. “then we selected his material, and he started working on it in his usual way.”

As the festival began, the crew put on “Top Girls” for discerning audiences. When it came time for the directing awards program, however, there was a problem. They were scheduled for three back to back runs of ‘Top Girls’ at different times that same day.

“Basically it was like show to show to show,” Villagomez said. “We had to get together and get into a van and go straight to the hotel because the preliminary round of the directing competition was at a different site.”

The directing program required that each director and their actors showcase their piece, and all had to be present for the judging, which was set to end around 4:00 P.M. but the performances of “Top Girls” ran past that time.

“We couldn’t find the time in our three show day,” Vaaz said, “but they accommodated us, and held the judges through the end of the day.”

Villagomez recalls the end of the performance when they were told to leave while the judges conversed.

“We were all frazzled we had just done three shows back to back to back,” Villagomez said. “I’m not even halfway towards the door and they were like, okay, we’ve decided, so they called me back and sat me down and they were like, we are going to advance you.”

Villagomez was selected as an alternate for the national

Top Facts

The first time Pierce College students have reached semifinals within this century.

Jon Micheal Villagomez was the assistant directing finalist.

• Jon Micheal Villagomez also won the National SDC student directing award alternate to the National festival.

Sarah Webster was the design finalist.

awards competition, an accolade he is proud to hold.

“So when I got the alternate to nationals, I was super stoked, I mean I had basically gotten what I needed out of the festival by that point,” Villagomez said. “It was really cool to have my work showcased in front of an audience like that.”

Villagomez will be playing the comedic character of Sir Toby Belch in the Pierce College production of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, which opens in a few weeks.