www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Wednesday, May 14, 2014 | 14 Artworks' Juried Art Show runs until Friday The 15th annual Juried Art Show hosted by Artworks Oakville showcases a collection of 90 works that celebrate art and artists within the local and surrounding communities. It runs until Friday (May 16) at the Gallery located in the Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre, 2302 Bridge Rd. Susan Dain received first place for her painting The Clown while Karin Lynn Cumming received second place for Fothills. Margaret Stawicki's Which Way earned her third place. Honourable mentions went to Rena Sava's Cityscape I, Doreen Renner's Inferno and Inge Kjeldgaard Tajik's The Girl Puppet. Jurors for this year's show were two accomplished Ontario artists, Diane White Beatty and Margaret Glew. Artworks Oakville is a volunteer art group that celebrates the arts and emerging local talent. It offers several exhibitions in Oakville and the surrounding area for its members each year. For more information, visit www.artworksoakville.ca. Artscene "Connected to your Community" New theatre group to present play at QEPCC by Julia Le Oakville Beaver Staff Artist Susan Dain was the first-place winner of ArtWorks Oakville's 15th Annual Juried Art Show. She stands beside her winning acrylic piece, entitled The Clown.| photo by Graham Paine Oakville Beaver (Follow on Twitter @ halton_photog or www.facebook.com/HaltonPhotog) Oakville teen stars in zombie-themed short by Julia Le Oakville Beaver Staff The 14-year-old makes her debut on the big screen at Toronto's Hot Docs Cinema tonight chased by visiting http://bit.ly/1mmUT8B. Kurelek, who is a Grade 8 student at Heritage Glen Public School, said she's excited about seeing herself on the big screen. Working on the film alongside Canadian veteran actors like Joy Tanner, Ricardo Hoyos, Barry Minshull, and Paco Paquito Hernaci was a true honour, she added. Gramps centres on Kurelek's character Edie who recently lost her beloved grandfather. She is shocked when he returns in zombie form, but her love for him overcomes her revulsion. Her brother, however, is horrified to find a "zombified" grandpa in his living room and grabs a baseball bat from his room. Edie is faced with the decision of which family member she'll side with. "What I really loved about this role was that it wasn't that hard for me," Kurelek told the Oakville Beaver. "It was still a challenge, but I could connect with the character very much; I could feel what she was going through and some of the decisions she made were the decisions I would make so that certainly helped." She added she approached the role by going through scenarios of how she would make decisions and how she would make it believable for an audience. Kurelek has acted with local community theatre groups like the BurlOak Theatre Group and the Oakville Academy for the Arts. It's been a passion of hers, she said, since she could remember. Daisy Kurelek is starring in her first short film, which will be debuting at the Ryerson University Film Festival this week. The 14-year-old Oakville teen landed the role of Edie in Gramps, a dark comedy written and directed by Brad Alexander and produced by Jacob Neayem. What I really loved about this role was that it wasn't that hard for me. It was still a challenge, but I could connect with the character very much; I could feel what she was going through and some of the decisions she made were the decisions I would make so that certainly helped. Daisy Kurelek Oakville actor Oakville actor Daisy Kurelek is starring in Gramps, which debuts at the Ryerson University Film Festival tonight (May 14).| photo by Ted Belton It will screen at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto tonight (May 14) at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $12 at the door or can be pur- "I love entertaining people. I love letting them know that I am here and I really love when I can make them laugh," she said. "I'm working on making them cry and it really makes me feel accomplished and happy that I can make people feel something." Kurelek will be attending the Etobicoke School of the Arts starting in September as a music theatre major. The newly-formed Knock Out Theatre Company will be bringing an absurdist play to the stage this week. The Oakville-based group that practices out of Trafalgar Presbyterian Church will be performing Gate Seventeen (Boarding Soon) tonight (May 14) until May 17 at the Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre. Show time is 8 p.m. each night, as well as a matinee performance on Saturday (May 17) at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $15 for the general audience and $10 for students with a valid student ID. They can be purchased at the door or reserved by emailing gate17show@ gmail.com. The 80-minute play, produced by Tyler Collins and Sandy Thi, is set in a waiting area at the airport over the course of a morning. Collins, who grew up in north Oakville and graduated from White Oaks Secondary School, describes how the play brings both realistic and fantastical characters together as they wait to board an airplane "that never seems to be coming." It's a modern twist to Waiting for Godot, a 1950s play by Samuel Beckett that centres around two characters waiting for their rendezvous with the mysterious Godot, he continued. Waiting for Godot is more about the interaction of the characters as they wait for something that never seems to be coming. "We want people to come into the theatre and be as entertained as they possible can for 80 minutes," said Collins, 18, who just completed his first year in Drama studies at the University of Waterloo. He said the theatre group was formed as a way for the members to have fun and create the same sense of enjoyment and wonder to an audience. The group formed about four months ago and is comprised of students from a variety of post-secondary schools across southern Ontario. Since then, the members have been putting in 30-40 hours a week at Trafalgar Presbyterian Church on Upper Middle Road to bring the play to the stage.