www.broadwayworld.com: The Jimmy Awards is the national talent showcase celebrating high school students from across the country featuring dynamic ensemble and solo performances. Each participating Regional Awards Program will award top honors to two student performers and will sponsor their travel to New York to participate in The Jimmy Awards on June 24th.
4 comments:
The Jimmy award is something that was new to me coming to CMU. I think getting the best and brightest performers of our generation together to celebrate high school theater is amazing. With so many people getting the start and gaming their love for theater in high school it seems logical that there is a program uniting all of the high school theaters in the US. I thought the Jimmys were relatively new and was shocked to find out that they were 15 years old. My one concern with award shows, especially those aimed at children, is the potential for the Jimmys to hurt a teenager's feelings or passion. I think this is mitigated by the Jimmys primarily being a workshop instead of a competition which aims to foster community instead of competition. I would love to look into the Jimmy’s more and see what the 102 talented young actors get up to during their time in New York.
I have a lot of opinions about the jimmy awards. There are some good things that come out of it but overall, I think there are so many negatives. My school participated in the entire process that sent kids to Jimmys and I have friends that have gone. In my opinion it takes high school theater and makes it way too competitive. Kids feel as if they do not go to the Jimmys and win the Jimmys they are going to fail and it puts so much pressure on these kids. I know in my senior year when the idea of it was introduced the pressure to get a lead role, and perform a perfect performance, and get all the audition material in made it a more tense environment. I also get upset because it does not include anything for technical theater. However, I always want to acknowledge that it does expose kids from all over to incredibly professional environments and broadway.
I love the Jimmy Awards! I did not really understand what they were growing up or how people got to be a part of them, but I used to watch them all the time as a theater kid in awe of seeing people that were my age or older that were so talented doing this big thing. I am still obsessed with Renee Rapp’s and Andrew Barth Feldman’s performances, and its crazy looking back now seeing how many famous broadway stars that were at those awards in their teens. I feel like I enjoy them more though when two people who I went to school with ended up competing in the regional awards and one of them made it onto the actual Jimmys. I went to see Greyson (yes, the one at cmu now) perform live at the Minskoff Theater with my mom and it was so cool and I would love to see it again in upcoming years!
I’m another one who had never heard of the Jimmy Awards until I got to CMU. Not that much of a surprise since I started high school the year that they were founded. I’m glad that there’s some kind of training and awards for high school students focusing on musical theatre, part of me questions the type of competition this creates. High school is already competitive enough between academics, college applications, etc. As someone who did choir and some musical theatre in high school, I can imagine the toxicity a competition like this can create in a program. It was bad enough just competing for nonensemble roles in the big musical we did every two years, I can’t imagine having to do that with the added impact of the Jimmy Awards and the potential scholarship it holds. I also looked at the locations of the participating awards program, it’s interesting the number of states that have more than one wards program and the size of the states. NC, TN, OH have two each out of the 23, while the rest of the 17 (minus TX which has two) only have one. The spread out of these competitions just feels off.
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