Oscar Speace, the creator of Janka (yank-ka), a drama about one woman’s will to survive the horrors of Nazi Germany and her desire to experience the American Dream, is an Emmy-winning television producer, writer and director. For more than 30 years, Speace has produced and directed a wide range of television and radio programming for KVPT-TV (PBS) and ABC 30 (ABC-TV).

 

Speace’s first TV recognition was for an Emmy nomination as producer-director of Conquest of My Brother, a TV documentary adapted from a play about the treaty making and breaking policy of the U.S. and how it affected Native American Indians. He produced and directed The Janice Noga Homecoming Concert at the Bastille Stage in Hanford, CA. As a screenwriter, his credits include: The Station, The Great Marble Shoot, Ottawa Summer, The Last Hanging and Janka: One Minute of Perfect Happiness.

 

Speace is also known in California’s Central Valley for his two Emmy’s won as part of the ABC30 Action News production team and National Public Television award for producing the best television auction in the U.S. for KVPT-TV in Fresno, CA. As the creator and producer of Valley Press, on KVPT since 1989, he has directed over 750 programs featuring local and national government leaders and Hollywood stars. He has also directed theatrical and political television remotes including the Electric Light Orchestra and John Regna’s Imperial Circus from the Hilton Theater in Reno, NV; and the first live broadcast of a California Supreme court regional session which was televised statewide in California in 2002.

 

Speace wrote, produced and edited The Making of the Parsley Garden, the behind the scenes look at the making of a film adaptation of a short story written by the nationally acclaimed author William Saroyan and directed by Hank Saroyan that originally was broadcast on ABC-TV in 1992. His other credits include writer, director and producer of San Joaquin Illustrated, a magazine program highlighting people and events in Central California, and executive producer of Master of Light, about Rolin Pickford, a premier California watercolor artist. In 2001, Speace wrote and directed the Radio Bilingue Mariachi Festival and Valley Children’s Hospital Telethon for ABC30.