“I’m always in service of story,” says Jennifer Wigmore, Theatre Arts ’19. “That's just the kind of person I am, and that's what's interesting and exciting to me. Serving and embodying the story.”

That mindset has helped her to shape her roles in hits like Amazon Prime's Cross, Malory Towers and Designated Survivor. The multi-hyphenate actor, visual artist, writer, activist and educator – and 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award honoree – approaches every new project, no matter the medium, by finding the narrative. At the heart of those stories are people.

Whether she is painting portraits or developing on-set relationships with cast and crew, Wigmore focuses on the people around her, and on their stories and struggles. It’s a big part of what drove her to co-found the new and rapidly growing Association of Acting Coaches and Educators (AACE).

“I was working with a grassroots group called Got Your Back, and we went all across Canada, providing a platform for mostly female-identifying artists to talk about their experiences with #MeToo,” she explains. “It was primarily actors talking about rehearsal and performance spaces, and that quickly led to conversations about acting training environments. The same issues and problems were happening there.”

She explains that acting educators don’t need specific qualifications or licensing, and those educational environments are outside the jurisdiction of acting unions or guilds, so there simply wasn’t a way to ensure safe conditions. AACE provides resources, education, community and members adhere to a set of voluntary commitments that follow a code of conduct for best practices and industry standards.  

“All of AACE’s educational offerings are geared towards the conversations that are current in acting training – mental health, gender and racial diversity, power and imbalance of power,” says Wigmore. “We’re dealing with people's emotions, so it's very important that acting coaches have a critical awareness of how their influence can impact students, their mental health and their careers.”

Now with over 165 members, AACE has expanded to the United Kingdom. Wigmore notes that with cuts to arts funding, the association is more important than ever in ensuring students have a safe space to learn their craft. 

“The hardest part about being an actor is feeling like you’re in it by yourself,” she says, adding that the environments that budding actors traditionally used to grow their community are increasingly harder to find, especially with the shift to online auditioning.

“Auditions are on Zoom, or you send in a self-tape on your phone. You don’t go in to audition or see people anymore. It’s a very challenging environment for artists in a collaborative art form,” she says. “You lose the feedback in the room from the casting director, director or the reader. Even meeting other actors in the waiting room built a sense of community.”

Wigmore notes that continuing education through acting classes helps to address some of those issues. It’s something she’s done throughout her career, both as a participant and as an educator, performing is in her blood. She grew up backstage in Edmonton fixtures like the Walterdale Theatre, which her father Ron Wigmore co-founded, and the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, where he was the general manager for its first 30 years. 

The passion she discovered there was carefully crafted and honed during her two years at MacEwan, learning from former Theatre Arts program director Tim Ryan.

“It was an incredible studio-based program that was immersive and intensive,” she says. “I didn’t do anything else for two years. If we weren't in class, we were rehearsing. Tim ran it like it was a theatre, and I loved every minute of it. It set me up perfectly for a career in this crazy business.”

And although she describes significant hurdles and challenges along the way – primarily suffering from imposter syndrome and learning to accept rejection – Wigmore adds that she always made space for play. 

“Allowing yourself to play as an actor can restore your artistic soul and it’s the quickest way to finding the story, because in play lies the truth of the human heart.”