Changing The Helen Hayes Awards

By Isaac Butler

One of my favorite experiences growing up was going to the annual Helen Hayes Awards.  If you might permit a piece of bragging, I started going to them because a show I was in was nominated for five of the biggees. We won one-- Best Leading Actor In A Musical-- which went to lead Fred Shiffman. I went every year after that, most of which were hosted by Pat Carroll who would always for some reason give us updates about how her children are doing in lieu of any kind of monologue, or patter, or anything that might be of interest to audience members who weren't her friends. 

Gwydion Suilebhan has a post up at his place about how he would change the Helen Hayes Awards.  These sorts of conversations are interesting because they're as much about how the theater scene has changed/grown as anything else.  Amongst other things, when I was a kid, I don't think there were enough high quality productions of new work, which is what lead to the Charles MacArthur awards combining plays and musicals into one new work category. 

Gwydion does not include (see update below) the change that most people I know would like to see-- and have wanted to see for at least fifteen years--which is the elimination of the slate of awards for nonresident productions. Really, if there are too many awards, these are the ones that need to go.  Back in the early days of the awards, before the DC scene really exploded and when they were trying to get the awards show off the ground, it made some sense to throw a sop to commercial touring productions. But it's far past time for the Helen Hayes Awards to take the rich, vibrant local scene in DC seriously enough to drop all of those categories. 

Gwydion also notes that he would like to see a new series of awards dedicated to "performance" or "physical theater" (a term he dislike for understandable reasons) largely because the company Synetic gets nominated for awards despite doing wordless, dance-like shows.  My only question is... is there enough of this kind of work happening in DC to justify an award category dedicated to it?  

Which brings me to a final point unrelated to the awards themselves:  I don't know about you guys and gals, but it seems to me that one of the things that DC could use is a venue like St. Ann's in Brooklyn or The Walker in Minneapolis (or RedCAT in LA or etc. etc. and so forth).  A venue dedicated to... shall we say... performance work, or mainstreamish experimental work or whatever you want to call it.  There should be a venue where work like L'Effet De Serge or Young Jean's work or the kind of performance work featured in Under the Radar is brought in.  I don't think any of that stuff should be eligible for awards or anything, but I think that kind of venue would be a good addition to the scene down there. Given the enormous amount of funding The Kennedy Center gets, it'd be nice if they refashioned themselves as DC's BAM instead of offering $100-a-pop celebrity studded readings of plays and the other boring work they offer.

UPDATE: I don't know how this happened, but somehow I happened to read Gwydion's post and then while writing this one FORGET THAT HE CAME OUT AGAINST THE NONRESIDENT PRODUCTIONS!  THis is what happens when you blog without coffee. 

Comments

[Gwydion Suilebhan]

I did recommend knocking the non-resident awards down to only ONE. That's a big change. (I only stopped at one instead of zero because, well, I knew there would be resistance.) But it's time we acknowledge that we've grown up. We don't "need" those awards like perhaps we once did.

Thanks, Isaac.

[isaac]

Yeah. I updated above because somehow I left that out in my memory while writing the post. WHoopsidaisey.

I'm interesting though, you know the scene better than I do... is there enough physical/performance work to create a separate category? Who else besides Synetic is doing good work like that?

[Gwydion Suilebhan]

Actually, I can't say there is anyone else... at their level. There are individual examples, but no one whose mission is completely in synch with Synetic's.

Perhaps the category needs to be expanded somewhat. The Drama Desk Awards include a category for "Unique Theatrical Experience," and while that phrase seems a bit condescending to me, it's at least expansive...

[cheap jerseys]

Of course, we must admit that Jim's work history also has a pick in the NBA draft, Bynum such success in the mine, but more are some of the failure, for example, O'Neill exiled in 2004, refused to contract with Phil Jackson , hired Rudy Tomjanovich and so on. Compared with his sister, Jenny, Jim's performance is really worse a few blocks.