Quincy callback: Marie Jamison returns to helm of Quincy Valley Allied Arts

QUINCY — Marie Jamison was elected president of Quincy Valley Allied Arts for the second time by the board of directors June 29.

Coming off a year with limited performances due to the pandemic, Jamison said she is eager to get things rolling again.

Jamison has been involved with QVAA since about 2013, just before she and her husband moved to Quincy from Mattawa, where they both grew up.

Growing up in musical theater in Mattawa, Jamison said she took a hiatus from performing after graduating high school until joining with QVAA.

“I wanted a way to meet people in the community because I didn’t know anyone in Quincy,” Jamison said. “When I saw an ad for auditions, I thought that was something I enjoyed doing and it would be a really good way to meet people in the community and, to this day, the people I’m closest with are from the theater or our church.”

She said it was the relationships built in the theater community that drew her back, in addition to the quality of performances Quincy Valley Allied Arts puts on. Jamison has been involved with the QVAA board for the past four or five years and served her first stint as president from 2017-2019.

Jamison said she learned a lot during her first time in the role, after being “wet behind the ears.” She said the QVAA board typically elects a vice president who’s voted to step in after the current president’s term.

While first serving as vice president before 2017, Jamison said she expected to have a couple of years to figure things out before taking over as president. But she was thrown into the role sooner than expected with the QVAA president stepping down before the end of her term. However, outgoing president Mandy Ottley was a great person to follow, Jamison said.

“I had to step in when I didn’t really feel ready,” Jamison said. “The nice thing was the rest of the board really helped me and really encouraged me and guided me on what we normally did and how things normally worked. But I didn’t feel like the type of leader I was supposed to be.”

Now, she said she feels ready to take on the leadership role she had hoped to during the first time as president, but has a little added pressure to “come back with a bang” after the pandemic.

QVAA streamed two radio-style audio show performances during the pandemic: “Frankenstein,” around Halloween, and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” near the holidays in December. Jamison directed “Frankenstein,” in addition to taking part in the performance, and said the audio shows were a nice way to remind the community “we’re still here.”

“I also think it gave the actors some hope because we didn’t really get to be together like we normally are because we had to take turns recording, but it was nice rehearing the final product and feeling like you were together,” she said.

More than anything, she said it gave hope to the actors and theater community there would be shows again, eventually.

One of the last performances for QVAA before the shutdown was “Mary Poppins,” a huge success Jamison said will be a tough act to follow in its own right.

“I feel a lot of pressure to follow up ‘Mary Poppins’ and a lot of pressure coming out of the pandemic and rallying the troops and getting people together,” Jamison said.

The hopeful first performance of the summer for QVAA, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” was originally set to open this weekend. But Jamison said it was tough getting people to come out with so much uncertainty in the spring, such as what the performance would look like, where it would be held and if it would even be possible.

She said it also can be tough convincing people who’ve been sitting at home for more than a year to sign back up for these extracurricular activities.

But, she said the casting is now on the verge of completion and she hopes to open performances for the musical near the end of August. Jamison said it’s a “hilarious” show that has plenty of catchy songs that are fun for all ages.

“I think a lot of people, even though they know Charlie Brown, they’re not as familiar with the musical,” Jamison said. “It’s really family-friendly, but it’s also hilarious, just the way the Peanuts gang relates to one another.”

While she hopes to continue to offer the classic musicals and shows the Quincy Valley Allied Arts community has come to love and embrace, Jamison said she’d also love to modernize the lineup a little bit. She said there are a lot of modern shows that would be fun to try and she would like to slowly blend some of them into the QVAA lineup.