Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The fifth annual National High School Musical Theater Awards crowned Sarah Lynn Marion of Fullerton, Calif., and Taylor Varga of Norwin, Conn., its 2013 best actor and actress Monday in a starry show at the Minskoff Theatre on Broadway. The event known as the Jimmy Awards was the culmination of a week of workshops and rehearsals with industry pros for the 62 nominees from 31 in-state competitions such as the Gene Kelly and Henry Mancini Awards.
3 comments:
There are two things I want to address. First, I really think there should be more opportunities like this for theatre design and production people. Competitions can bring upon really great ideas, especially in the group setting. I know for myself I work well under pressure so it would have been fun if there was some sort of competition in New York for technical theatre people. The second point I wanted to make is how difficult it is to receive outside theatre scholarships, let alone technical theatre scholarships which I believe is a real shame and pain in the butt.
I think an opportunity like this is invaluable to the continuing production of theatre people. All though there should be awards for tech and backstage, I think that awards like this encourage all types of people to continue an education and career in theatre. Many people get shied away from it, whether it's because they don't think they're good enough, or possibly because they don't see a career prospect in it. Supporting the High School theatre scene is an invaluable way to keep young theatre professionals entering the theatre world at a professional level at some point. I know when my HS went to competitions, there was always so much buzz about the theatre group, and when we won 1st once, the entire school knew about it. That's particularly amazing, because even when the winter musical is about to go up, you barely hear any chatter about it outside the club room.
The "National High School Musical Theatre Awards" are incredible. The fact that an organization can bring the most talented high school actors and singers from around the country to NYC for a weekend competition is wonderful. Although I agree with Simone that there should be an equal competition for design and production in high school, it is much more difficult to bring together designers work. Actors travel with their work, most designers cannot bring a large scale 3-D representation of their work to a competition. I would love to see something like this happen for design students, but for the time being, this program really promotes continuing theatre through college, which is something that we need! It's also amazing that so many of the winners/finalists are here at CMU!
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