*9 to 5: The Musical* preview

For Thursday's print version in The Inlander, this article got cut, and then cut again. (This is a tragedy: Bobo's prose is deathless.) Therefore, if you want to read all about Dee Hoty's emulation of Lily Tomlin; her real-life encounters with sexist sleazeballs; what her pre-show routine is like; and a bit about the musical's songs ... here ya go.

If you’re performing in the musical version of a movie that everybody knows, and you’re playing a part identified with a particular actress, then here’s how to pay her homage: Rip her off. But be nice about it.

In the national tour of 9 to 5 (March 24-27 at the INB Center), Dee Hoty is playing the Lily Tomlin role of Violet, the office veteran who mentors two co-workers in their shared struggle against their sexist jerk of a boss.

“Steal from the best,” Hoty says. (That's her in the photo in 2008, when she played Mame at the 5th Street in Seattle.) “If it’s a great idea, you should have it for yourself.” What Hoty found fascinating about Lily Tomlin’s performance in the 1980 movie “was her stillness. It’s a real lesson in how less is more. Just let the words do the work — you don’t have to do all these big gesticulations.”

Late in the first act, for example, when the three women are fearful that they’ve acted out Violet’s fantasy and actually poisoned Mr. Hart’s coffee, everybody runs off seeking medical help. “In the hospital scene, when everyone is going berserk and totally losing it, I’m very controlled in the way [director] Jeff [Calhoun] has redone the show,” Hoty says.

“’You gotta know what to do,/ You gotta do it in a hurry … slam the phone, open the door’ — there’s a whole dance for the ensemble there, but in the middle of it all is my tutorial with Judy. I try to be the calm in the storm.”

Hoty’s wily veteran is joined by Judy the newbie (Mamie Parris) and Doralee the hubba-hubba blonde (Diana DeGarmo, the American Idol runner-up in 2004, the year of Jennifer Hudson and William Hung).

The kind of sexism the characters face isn’t just a relic of the ‘80s — Hoty has faced it herself. “One time,” she recalls, “I had a film audition for a kind of courtesan-y girl in the Old West, one of those dance hall girls. And this was with a famous director and a famous casting director, who will remain nameless. So we went into the room to read, and the casting director began to snuggle up to me. In the moment, I figured that’s what the part called for. I didn’t feel threatened, I just played along — that’s just who this girl is, I thought. Well, he started reaching toward somewhere he shouldn’t … and then he stopped himself.

“I haven’t had a lot of those ‘Hey, baby, I’ll make it worth your while …’  moments,” Hoty says, using her most gravelly voice. “Honestly? I’m a woman of a certain age. Nobody’s making passes at me now. It’s not like I’m 24.”

But that’s OK. “I don’t have a giant ego, because that won’t get you very far in this business,” Hoty says. “I mean, when I roll out of bed in the morning, I’m not thinking of myself as ‘three-time Tony nominee Dee Hoty.’”

She’s thinking of herself as a working actor who’s got a job. (She's already working with her agent to set up a part in a play this August, since the 9 to 5 tour ends in July.)

Ah, yes, life on the road. For an actress in a musical about the routine of office work, what’s the daily routine like?

Hoty — who travels with her three-legged Pomeranian — spends a lot of time describing her routine with Sophie the dog.

Before shows, she says, “I vocalize in the shower. Then I do a little mini-workout — I call it a 'hotel workout' — with those stretchy bands. Then, one hour before the show, I get to the theater and get into my ‘smalls’ [i.e., underwear]. I start my makeup, and I have a ‘hair call’ for the wig lady at half-hour. We do the pin curls and she puts on my wig. I finish my makeup, do some itty-bitty vocalizing — just to make sure it’s all there — and then I have a dresser who comes by to help — make sure I’m wearing my watch and have my wedding ring, since those are both important to the plot.

"I’m rarely offstage in the show, so I set my cap for that. When the curtain comes down, we move in reverse: I give everything to my dresser, but I  re-do some things for her, like replacing my clothes that need to be on the deck for my quick changes. Then I get back down to my skin, clothes go to the laundry, and we’re ready to do another show.

"On a two-show day, I’ll keep some of my prep on — the pin curls, my makeup. I’ve fond this fabulous new makeup that doesn’t slide down your neck by 9 o’clock! 

"And I have a variety of hats, so I don’t look like one of those Broadway chorines sitting in a diner with her baseball cap on.”  

In the show, Hoty gets to sing about that kind of routine. There’s the title tune, of course. (All the songs in the musical, including the lyrics, are by Dolly Parton.) There’s a song for Violet’s introduction to Judy about office life. There are songs for each of the three women’s revenge fantasies against their boss. There’s a song when they realize that they’re confronted by the boss’s right-hand woman, a song when they triumph, and songs for when they rid themselves of useless men and start to realize their own potential.

Because 9 to 5 isn't just a chick show. It's chick-empowering show ... with music.

9 to 5: The Musical • Thurs, March 24, at 7:30 pm; Fri, March 25, at 8 pm; Sat, March 26, at 2 pm and 8 pm; Sun, March 27, at 1 pm and 6:30 pm • $37-$70 • INB Center • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • bestofbroadwayspokane.com • (800) 325-SEAT

Best of Broadway Spokane announces 2010-11 season

Oct. 6-9, 2010
South Pacific

Oct. 18
Liza Minnelli

Oct. 27
The Capitol Steps

Nov. 5
Stomp

Dec. 1
Spring Awakening

Feb. 10-13, 2011
Legally Blonde: The Musical

March 24-27
9 to 5: The Musical

April 22-23
Cats

May 15-29, 2011
Wicked


Well, for one night in December and a couple of weeks in May 2011, Bobo and plenty of musical theater fans got their wishes granted. (Makes us feel downright "Popular.")

But are we legally required to sit through weeks of dreck to get there? Cats feels like a nasty, recurring skin rash.

And I'm pretty sure they got the date and venue wrong for Liza Minnelli, because just two weeks from now at the Arena is that Walking with Dinosaurs thing.

review of *Avenue Q*

at the INB Center through Valentine's Day

You know how psychologists sometimes encourage troubled little kids to talk to dolls? Externalizing feelings like that — talking to a pretend-friend — helps the tykes reveal and examine anxieties that they otherwise might not be willing to discuss.
That’s what it’s like watching Avenue Q.
The puppets do the heavy lifting for us. Are you a lot more likely to discuss the weather and the latest sports scores than you are to earnestly engage another human being on issues that really matter, like sex and race and the meaning of life?
Well, join the club. We could all use a little puppet therapy.
Bobo feels fortunate to have witnessed a musical as amusing, edgy and yes, inspiring, as Avenue Q.
Brent Michael DiRoma has expressive voices in both halves of his significant gay-straight equivalence doubling as both Princeton and Rod.
And while I was initially disappointed that the Thursday night audience was getting the understudy Kate Monster, Ashley Eileen Bucknam and her talented doubling demonstrated that conventional Kate & provocative Lucy live, at least a little bit, inside many women.
From the soundtrack alone, you wouldn’t know how extensively this show uses TV screens to spoof the simple-minded teaching methods of Sesame Street, then twists them to give them a wicked adult kick.
The sound mix, however, was off: some voices were shrieky-squealy; sometimes the five-man band simply overwhelmed the lyrics with too much volume.
The doubling of puppets could be confusing -- three actors have no puppets, some have two, some have more than two, some throw their voices over to puppets they’re not holding; some puppets have two operators, one of whom never speaks or sings. Couldn’t the creators have divided the roles more generously? (But as I said, the doubling of Rod (gay) and Princeton (straight) does highlight how romantic-longing is a human emotion, not exclusive either to my kind of sexuality or yours.
Face-to-face puppet squabbles are funny. (In general, the puppet-choreography was remarkably expressive and well done.)
Because of the puppet confusions, personally, I never quite resolved the look at the puppets/look at the humans dilemma.
Bobble-head chirpiness and dance moves, when shared by both humans and puppets, are funny -- it mocks the over-serious side of ourselves and unlocks the playfulness. That’s what Avenue Q does: It gives us permission, during a two-hour recess for overworked adults, to pause and be creative and accepting again. It allows us to look at ourselves from the perspective of the kid inside, who always wanted better things — back when we first were dreaming our dreams.

And I feel embarrassed about having bought into WestCoast Entertainment’s cautions about not over-stressing the profanity content.
(Hey, cussing is nothing to be proud of, and we should all limit it, especially in public -- which I DO find offensive — but studies have shown that a little cussing is physiologically a good thing, and we should stop being in denial about how we all do it from time to time. Sort of like this show’s themes about admitting that racism, porn, sexual desire and schadenfreude are not exactly utterly foreign to the vast majority of us.)
But it’s about time to shed the poor-little-provincial-Spokane attitude. Yes, we’re in the red half of a blue state, and I did see two walkouts tonight, and the mega-church members probably aren’t flocking to a gay-porn-puppet show. But judging from the ample size and laughter of Thursday night’s opening-night crowd, there’s a critical mass of folks here now who aren’t fazed by those New York City liberal ways.
Avenue Q, far from being childish or obscene, is enlivening, enspiriting, and very human and forgiving.

DiRoma’s voice was particularly expressive on “Purpose,” his longing-song. In general, Bobo was pleasantly surprised by how often this show, often marketed as being full of potty-mouth puppets and oh-my-God-somebody-might-be-offended, instead has plenty of quiet, touching, serious, wise, well-integrated moments. And DiRoma made his “I want” song dramatic.
The pair of Bad Idea Bears (Kerri Brackin and Jason Heymann) were hilarious: They were externalizations of our guilty impulses. (So is Trekkie Monster.) The show lets us see how easy it turn one Long Island Iced Tea into four, how easy it is to fall into bed with the wrong/right person.
Treating serious stuff in a silly manner is cathartic, too. (Monsters are discriminated against as “people of fur.”) The song about racism devolves into a soft-shoe routine: silly but serious, but silly, all at once.
The cast was vocally strong.

The best test of your threshold for what’s funny or not in this show might be Kate’s crabby old bitch of a boss at the kindergarten where she teaches, one Miss Lavinia Thistletwat, who insists on being called by her last name, because otherwise the kids wouldn’t respect her.
As for the "Porn" song, it’s hilarious when Trekkie self-censors (covering his mouth instead of chiming in for the 15th time with “for porn!”) — especially when juxtaposed with the line soon after: ‘Hey, guys, just grab your dick and double-click ... for porn!”
A cheap joke that appeals to my own sensibilities: Rod, as a Republican and an investment banker, is good for ... absolutely nothing. And therefore he might as well just stay in the closet.

Soon after, Princeton and Kate are having loud, screaming missionary-position sex! (Can they do that onstage?) And then you realize, they’re just puppets.
Dislocating emotions from the actors to the bunches of fuzz and latex that they’re manipulating can be

In the context of all the puppet play, Gary Coleman stroking the broom obscenely got a bit too crude, too literal. But Gary and then Trekkie burying their faces lasciviously deep, deep into the bosoms of Lucy the Slut --that was hilarious.

Bucknam was touching on “a fine, fine line between love and a waste of time.” Again, lots of serious, thoughtful emotion here, given all the more impact by the fact that moments before, you were laughing at puppet-silliness.

And you’ll never think the same way again, ever, about the relationship between a slang word for orgasm and the word “commitment.” (Brilliant. Summarized in just two words the whole battle of the sexes.)

Next season's road shows in Spokane

WestCoast Entertainment has announced its 2009-10 Best of Broadway Spokane season.

Sept. 1-6
Fiddler on the Roof, with Topol

Oct. 24
The Chad Mitchell Trio

Nov. 11-Dec. 6
The Lion King

Feb. 11-14, 2010
Avenue Q

April 8-11, 2010
Little House on the Prairie: The Musical

Bobo must pronounce himself underwhelmed. Chad Mitchell and Lion King, been here before, and recently. Little House the Musical I don't know -- and rather liked the song sung on the trailer, projected on a large screen for subscribers to see on the INB stage this afternoon -- but it's another example of dredging up every known baby boomer TV show and movie and musicalizing it just to make a buck because boy, there sure are a lot of middle-aged folks with disposable income these days. Fiddler is one of my most beloved musicals - the end of the golden era, the guts to end unhappily, nearly every one of the first-act songs a classic -- and it'll be fun to see Topol in the role (though he does turn 74 in September). Avenue Q is the highlight of today's announcements. (And Lion King, if you haven't seen it -- Disney and Bobo may have stomped too hard on the publicity, but it's still a very good show. I just wish it were returning about five years from now and not already.)



Note that late Sept./early Oct., along with Jan., March and May 2010 are all open, so we're likely to hear some more announcements. There's hope.

The advertising campaign that we'll see more of ("Have you been ... amazed ... excited ... fulfilled today? [Actually, no, I haven't.] Experience Broadway. See a show!") is a textbook case of marketing to theater newbies as opposed to veteran audience members. (I'm sure I read somewhere that -- no, I heard Ben Cameron say this last year, the former head of TCG -- that if you want to draw in new audiences, you emphasize how emotionally moving a theater experience can be -- whereas, if you're chasing after theater aficionados' money, you underscore performances, actors, sets -- how these upcoming shows fit into the tradition. The idea is that rare theatergoers don't much care about all that crap, having little experience to contextualize it with.)

*The Color Purple*: outtakes

In advance of the preview in Thursday’s Inlander, here are some additional notes and comments on the musical version of The Color Purple — and outtakes from Bobo’s interview with Felicia P. Fields — along with a review …

[photo: Felicia P. Fields as Sofia (second from left) in The Color Purple; visit broadwayworld.com]

THE COLOR PURPLE
Differences from the novel in the movie:
Deleted: scene when Shug was singing and walking down the road to her father’s church
Deleted: scene when Celie tries to kill Mister while shaving him
Added: Celie and Shug become lovers
Changed: for the big reunion at the end, they AREN’T in African garb and speaking in the Olinka language.

(Humorous side note: After the three composers of the musical version had failed to find information on the customs of the Olinka, Alice Walker revealed to them that she had simply made up the tribe.)

Broadway musical ran Dec 05-Feb 08 : 30 previews + 910 performances.
Recouped its $11M investment in one year.
Produced by Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey (who was Sofia in the movie), among others, including the Weinsteins.
Book by Marsha Norman
Music and lyrics by a team of three: Allee Willis (who wrote “September” and “Boogie Wonderland” for Earth, Wind and Fire, and the theme song for Friends; Stephen Bray (who wrote a lot of songs for Madonna); and Brenda Russell

LaChanze as Celie (won Tony).
Felicia P. Fields as Sofia was nominated for a Tony.
The show went one for 11 at the Tonys in ’06.
Jeannette Bayardelle, formerly in the ensemble, played Celie in Los Angeles.

Premiered at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta in summer ’04.
Sept. ‘04 world premiere.
LaChanze and Felicia Fields were with the show even then.

April ‘07, started national tour in Chicago, with Felicia and Jeannette
Chicago was chosen because of Oprah, director Gary Griffin, and Felicia Fields, all of whom are Chicago residents.
Went one for 11 at Tonys: LaChanze, as Celie, was the only winner.

Fields won ‘06 Theater World Award and was nominated for the Drama League award – she mentioned awards “that I had never heard of before” – like the Clarence Derwent Award.

The show is in Costa Mesa Nov. 18-30, then San Diego Dec. 2-7, then here, then Seattle, Portland, Denver, Tulsa, OK City ... all the way to Boston in June ’09.

Felicia Fields on audiences that are attentive but quiet all evening long:
“I don’t wanna wait nearly three hours to find out, ‘Oh, yeah, they were out there, they were listenin’. A lot of times, on my first cross [move across stage], when the drum rolls and I can hear it, I’m thinkin’, “’What are we doin’, paintin’ up here?”
Hell, no! We’re singin’ and dancin’ up here!

Of course, the doubters didn’t think The Color Purple could be turned into a musical. And even a quarter-century ago, when Walker published her novel, the black community bristled at the suggestion that some of its members might be bisexual. Or sadistic.
The men are just monsters. And in ‘85, Spielberg balked at portraying any lesbian love between goddess Shug and ugly duckling Celie.
The musical isn’t graphic, but it also makes clear that Shug likes her love in a couple of different flavors.
Shug Avery comin’ to town!
“They talk about her for about half an hour” before she first enters, Fields says. “You got people talking about her that much, you build up an interest. I always say to the woman playing Shug, ‘I’m comin’ on with some drumstick — you comin’ in on the whole town!”

the title (and first-draft conclusion):
The title phrase becomes clear in the novel (though not in the musical) when Shug says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. God just wants to be loved.”
The producers would like you to think that it pisses the performers off if you listen to them sing “The Color Purple” and don’t stand up and cheer. This is a musical about love, y’all.
Amen.

from the promotional video:
Walker, who was skeptical about the musical at first, now says that she wants playgoers to come out and “unshackle themselves” — from them self-doubt that prevents success, from the injustices imposed upon them.

from our interview:
As Fields says, “Musical theater should be an experience. You should be transformed when you leave, been through something that has changed your life.”

Marsha Norman on musicals, in the video:
“There’s a chance in songs to get past the defenses people have.”
(She and Walker won their Pulitzer Prizes on the same day in 1983; Norman, for ‘night, Mother.) (Norman goes on to say, enthusiastically, that songs are the best way to convey the excitement of falling in love and other emotions.)


lyrics used to illustrate call and response:
from the opening number, following “Make a joyful noise” (cut for space):
‘Cause the Lord is walkin’ witcha, talkin’ witcha ...

from the song “Push Da Button” (Shug Avery’s sexually suggestive shimmy-dance in which “kitty,” “button” and “cream” mean exactly what you think they mean):
Shug:
So when tonight you make your lover
Cry out like a lion roar
Tell the neighbors your new kitty
Found the cream it lookin’ for!
Push da button!


Felicia Fields in the promotional video that came in the press kit, on how call and response is fundamental to the experience of The Color Purple in live theater performance:
“I can’t tell you how many nights, when I sang ‘Hell, No!,’ somebody’s talkin’ back to me, OK?”

Can I get an Amen?
Or at least a white person makin’ some kinda noise?


from our interview:
So Fields has lived through a lot of adversity. Maybe she’s not acting much up there?
“My mother says I’m not,” she says, laughing. “It would be a whole lot worse if I was myself. You’d have to have a lot more material ready, because I would have hit Mister a lot quicker. Even Harpo. And the same with Squeak.
The show wouldn’t have lasted very long.”

the fate of Sophia; “African Homeland” as counterpoint to Sofia’s suffering (cut from the print version):
But even Sofia, brash and self-assertive, is subjected to horrifying injustice in this show before Walker’s narrative allows her to regain a measure of happiness.
In fact, during the second-act sequence set in Africa (where Celie’s beloved sister Nettie has gone to live), the injustice of the (fictional) Olinka tribe being pushed off their homeland by white colonizers parallels and provides a setup for the injustice of Sofia being maimed in body and soul just because she sassed a white woman.



Bobo saw this touring version of The Color Purple in Los Angeles in February. Here’s his review. (It was written for an arts journalism institute, a sort of boot camp for theater critics.) The assignment was to lead with an arresting image, an exact detail from the show. The “Other details …” and “Director Gary Griffin …” paragraphs, together, work in another image that Bobo found memorable. (This was our first assignment — 25 of us at the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater — and the effect of the group-think shows, because everyone was eager to demonstrate their critical acuity by bashing this show.)

Return to Sender

He has lifted the hem of her dress with his riding crop, leered and slobbered at her, appraised her like livestock. But when Mister seizes Nettie — the dastardly villain assaulting poor defenseless innocence — his grasping fingers appear from a doorway in scarlet light, like a jolt from a cheap horror movie.
The Color Purple (at the Ahmanson through March 9) offers vibrant settings, rambunctious choreography and some soaring ballads in the spirit of sisterhood and self-affirmation. But a surrender to the alternating conventions of melodrama and light musical comedy prevents this saga of sexism and abuse, estrangement and loss from being played for the life-and-death stakes it requires. Every poignant moment, it seems, must be followed by a frenetic dance break or a cackling three-woman chorus. Sisters pledge their fidelity and men declare their undying love — which would be fine and dandy if emotions were allowed to register before break-out-into-song moments rushed proceedings along.
As Sofia — the “hell, no!” fat lady played in the movie by Oprah Winfrey, whose imprimatur this production carries — Felicia P. Fields balls up her fists and laughs at authority with such crowd-pleasing gusto that her example, meant to instruct Jeannette Bayardelle’s Celie, may instead overwhelm her appeal. Bayardelle, tasked with acting abused and robotic for much of the evening, belts out the power ballads by its end, leading to the evening’s predictably triumphant end.
Other details are more successful. Broad green leaf fronds against gingham, for example: In a dream sequence that transports Celie to Africa and reunites her, if only in imagination, with her beloved sister, the contrast of sedate American frocks with regal African robes evokes the long journey toward self-affirmation that Celie travels in this trying-too-hard-to-be-inspiring show.
Director Gary Griffin nicely interweaves the two worlds of Celie’s hopeful visions and harsh reality, deploying white-clad African émigrés trudging across the savannah in a tableau that’s broken by forlorn, slump-shouldered Celie pacing toward the audience, at cross-purposes with her ancestral people.
It’s an effective sequence. Too bad that the musical version of The Color Purple is at cross-purposes with its emotional tenor, presenting us with prefabricated emotions instead of embodying Celie’s triumphs.
&&
Marsha Norman’s book hews close to Alice Walker’s novel, but with the burden of translating into melodramatic action what was quiet pathos in Celie’s letters to God.

The songs were inspiring in the moment but not memorable afterwards.

final list of nominees for the 2007-08 Spokies

The Spokane-area theater award winners will be announced in *The Pacific Northwest Inlander* on Thursday, June 26.

Limited to four nominees per category (with three exceptions).
Some categories have fewer nominees.
In nine of the 19 categories, Bobo had five to eight nominees on his short list. Those categories include four of the six acting categories (featured actor, actor-musical, actress-play and actress-musical); three of the technical categories (choreography, set-play and costumes-musical); and two others (ensemble and local musical).
Apologies in advance for any misattributions or misspellings – and please post some comments helping out Bobo on some character names -- and perhaps other, missed details. (Not to mention all the “How could you possibly leave out X, Y and Z?!?” comments.)


OUTSTANDING CHOREOGRAPHY:
Ross Cornell for Thoroughly Modern Millie, CdA Summer Theater
Troy Nickerson for Man of La Mancha, Civic
Roger Welch and Andrew Start for The Full Monty, CdA Summer Theater WINNER
Michael Wasileski for Kiss Me, Kate, CdA Summer Theater

LIGHTING:
Peter Hardie for South Pacific, Civic
David Baker for Man of La Mancha, Civic WINNER
David Baker for The Christmas Schooner, Civic

SET-MUSICAL:
Michael McGiveney for Kiss Me, Kate, CST
Peter Hardie for South Pacific, Civic
David Baker for The Christmas Schooner, Civic WINNER
David Baker for Man of La Mancha, Civic

SET-PLAY:
Peter Hardie for The Night of the Iguana, Civic
John Hofland for Rabbit Hole, Actors Repertory Theatre of the Inland Northwest WINNER
William Rosevear for The Rainmaker, Spokane Interplayers Ensemble
Maynard Villers for Rounding Third, Interplayers

COSTUMES-MUSICAL:
Susan Berger and Jan Wanless for The Christmas Schooner, Civic
Susan Berger and Jan Wanless for Man of La Mancha, Civic
Judith McGiveney for Kiss Me, Kate, CST WINNER

COSTUMES-PLAY:
Dee Finan for Tour de Farce, CenterStage
Jessica Ray for Souvenir, Actors Rep WINNER
Jessica Ray for Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep

FEATURED ACTRESS:
Kathie Doyle-Lipe as Nat in Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep
Caryn Hoaglund as Izzy in Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep
Marianne McLaughlin as Bloody Mary in South Pacific, Civic WINNER
Manuela Peters as Hannah Jelkes in The Night of the Iguana, Civic

FEATURED ACTOR:
Luke Barats as Barnett in Crimes of the Heart, Civic
Carter J. Davis as Jamie in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Actors Rep
Patrick McHenry-Kroetch as Tyler in Laughing Stock, Civic
Jimmy-James Pendleton as Jason in Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep
Jonathan Rau as Buddy "Keno" Walsh in The Full Monty, CST WINNER

LEADING ACTOR-MUSICAL:
Dennis Craig as the grandfather in The Christmas Schooner, Civic
Robby French as Jamie in The Last Five Years, Civic Studio
Patrick McHenry-Kroetch as Cervantes/Quijana/Quixote in Man of La Mancha, Civic WINNER
Michael Muzatko as Emile deBecque in South Pacific, Civic
Curt Olds as Pete in Pete ‘n’ Keely, Actors Rep

LEADING ACTOR-PLAY:
Tony Caprile as Don in Rounding Third, Interplayers
Patrick Treadway as the Professor in All the Great Books (abridged), Actors Rep WINNER
Michael Weaver as Howie in Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep

LEADING ACTRESS-PLAY:
Olivia Brownlee in “Rodeo” and “Handler,” Talking With, CenterStage
Page Byers as Becca in Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep
Piper Gunnarson as Carol in Oleanna, Interplayers
Karen Nelsen as Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Actors Rep WINNER
Kelly Quinnett as Lizzie in The Rainmaker, Interplayers

LEADING ACTRESS-MUSICAL:
Krystle Armstrong as Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie, CST
Abbey Crawford as Keely in Pete ‘n’ Keely, Actors Rep WINNER
Andrea Dawson as Cathy in The Last Five Years, Civic
Tami Knoell as Aldonza/Dulcinea, Man of La Mancha, Civic

DIRECTOR-PLAY:
Tralen Doler for Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep WINNER
Ellen Crawford for Grace & Glorie, Interplayers
Todd Jasmin for The Rainmaker, Interplayers and Lake City Playhouse
Maynard Villers for Rounding Third, Interplayers

DIRECTOR-MUSICAL:
Maria Caprile for The Christmas Schooner, Civic
Yvonne A.K. Johnson for The Last Five Years, Civic
Troy Nickerson for Man of La Mancha, Civic
Michael Weaver for Pete ‘n’ Keely, Actors Rep
Roger Welch for The Full Monty, CST WINNER

ENSEMBLE:
All the Great Books (abridged), Actors Rep
Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep WINNER
Man of La Mancha, Civic
Crimes of the Heart, Civic

TOURING MUSICAL:
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels WINNER
High School Musical
The Wedding Singer

LOCAL MUSICAL:
The Full Monty, CST WINNER
The Last Five Years, Civic
Man of La Mancha, Civic
Pete ‘n’ Keely, Actors Rep

DRAMA:
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Actors Rep
The Night of the Iguana, Civic
Rabbit Hole, Actors Rep WINNER

COMEDY:
All the Great Books (abridged), Actors Rep WINNER
Laughing Stock, Civic
Tour de Farce, CenterStage