Some good things about this year’s Ovation Awards:
1. The brand-new best-season category was given the final spot on the program. In most awards shows, that last presentation is considered the most prestigious, the grand finale. Honoring an entire season in that spot instead of one particular show is a wonderful idea. Why elevate one of the four individual production awards (best play and musical, for larger theaters and intimate theaters) into that position over any of the other three? A season of several excellent shows is more impressive than a single show. Maybe the prestige of this new award will provide another incentive to maintain more consistent quality.
Unfortunately, the print version of this morning’s Los Angeles Times story about the Ovations was cut so that this new award (to the ever-consistent Troubadour Theater) wasn’t even mentioned - let alone recognized as the show’s climax. The online version listed it - but misspelled “Troubadour.” Then again, the Times hasn’t even reviewed Troubadour’s current Frosty the Snow Manilow - the first time within my memory (or the Troubies’) that L.A.’s paper of record has overlooked a new Troubie show.
Ebony Rep Executive Director Wren Brown
2. All four winners of the individual production awards went to new and adventurous companies. I dislike singling out one show as “the best” within a category that includes many different kinds of quality, but all the winning productions were certainly worthy. I could even argue that Ebony Rep’s winning revival of Two Trains Running - not one of August Wilson’s best plays - was all the more adventurous and worthy precisely because we need to know even the B-list of a playwright on Wilson’s level.
3. Two of the best production Ovations honored the work of companies - Ebony Rep and Havok (for Kiss of the Spider Woman) - that began producing during a period of extreme economic duress yet chose to use Equity contracts to pay actors, instead of the cheaper 99-Seat Theater Plan. They’re part of that oft-ignored tier of L.A. theater’s middle-size siblings. Ovation Awards might help validate their choices.
4. Likewise, the new Ovation for Louis & Keely Live at the Sahara helps validate the Geffen Playhouse’s decision to offer a larger venue and an Equity contract to this L.A.-bred show - which had already received an Ovation as an “intimate” musical the previous year, for its original 99-Seat Plan production. Voters might have been tempted to theorize that Louie & Keely had already been sufficiently honored, but instead they recognized that the step up the Equity scale - as well as significant changes (mostly improvements, in my opinion) - meant that the show deserved a second chance to win Ovations.
5. The choice of Chalk Repertory Theatre’s Family Planning as the best new play in an intimate theater truly honored the “intimate” part of that category definition. This was a production that played in the living rooms of private homes. It was a model of how companies literally can think outside the black box.
The Producing Team of Chalk Repertory Theatre
Of course the downside of such tiny venues is that the audiences are severely limited not only by the seating capacities but also by the marketing of a show that changes locations so frequently. On the other hand, do it in enough neighborhoods and soon it will become a city-wide phenomenon - just as mobile gourmet food vendors became the talk of L.A.’s restaurant scene last year. This Ovation Award might encourage that kind of buzz.
6. Kevin King’s The Idea Man, which won the playwriting award, is a play about class distinctions in the contemporary industrial workplace - not a subject that appears on our stages frequently. Its ambitions were more interesting than most other new plays’ results. I don’t know if any rewrites are going on, but here’s a play that would be great to see on L.A.’s middle tier. That kind of production would presumably offer a big enough stage to allow more scenic flexibility than it got at the Elephant, as well as an Equity contract - which, considering the subject matter, would be especially appropriate.
And now a few complaints:
1. I said it before, I’ll say it again - voters should be required to see more than 25 productions. I realize that these are busy theater artists, but - news flash here - that’s not exactly a full-time, year-round job for many of them. Maybe the voters who see the most shows should be briefly but publicly honored at the ceremony. The voters did a better job this year than usual, but how informed are a voter’s comparative standards if he or she sees only 25 shows out of nearly 400 contenders?
2. It probably would be politically difficult to raise the number of voters who must see a show higher than the current 12. But in order to make sure than the proportion of voters who like a show isn’t artificially stacked in the show’s favor, increase the random assignments of shows to voters (it’s currently one in five shows that any voter sees) to make sure that more eligible shows are covered. This year, for the current voting season, voters are being assigned to see shows for which initial demand is high - to help make sure that those who are pre-disposed to like a show won’t be the only ones who get to vote on it. That’s a good step, but increasing the number of randomly assigned shows to one in four would also help. If voters see a few fiascos, it helps them appreciate the triumphs.
3. Why present a show at Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center without a pre-curtain comedy routine by James Blackman, who runs the South Bay CLO that is the resident company there? As long as you keep a giant hook ready to yank him off the stage if he goes beyond, say, three minutes, why not add a little of his levity to the evening? At this year’s ceremony, shadow puppets on the big screen at the back of the stage were funny at first, but they became a little tiresome as the minutes mounted.
The Troubadour Theater Company
4. What - no audience-wide standing ovations at this year’s ceremony? That’s a bizarre omission for something that’s called the Ovation Awards. Although I don’t normally approve of automatic standing ovations in theaters, I enjoy rising to my feet a few times at awards ceremonies - if only for the relief to my rear end. Here’s an idea - let’s stop most of the partisan screaming and whooping at every mention of favorite companies or shows and instead participate in a less earsplitting standing ovation or two. We would all be healthier.
