www.broadwayworld.com: It is award season. And every year newcomers to the industry ask what most of the awards are. In this series, I’ll hopefully explain that. I'll be looking at many of the major awards other than the Tony Awards. First up today: the Drama Desk Awards and the Drama League Awards.
4 comments:
The drama desk awards are so super cool in my opinion. I am the type of person who NEEDS and seeks validation when it comes to my work. I would love to win a drama desk award one day. I know, for example, Susan has one, and Susan is someone I look up to especially because she is a VERY successful woman of color doing work in a field I am so passionate about and interested in. It’s been very difficult being a woman of color in the field of tech theater because there aren't many of us interested in the field, or there is something preventing us from doing so. Especially in the school of drama, there are only a small handful of us. It would be SO awesome being a (future) scenic designer (hopefully) and getting a drama desk award as a brown girl. It would literally be a dream come true.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬I don't typically watch a lot of awards shows of my own volition, usually they’re around and I see bits and pieces but most of the time you can figure out who’s going to win based on who’s nominated and so there isn’t much point unless you know someone and want to support them. The main reason that you can tell who’s going to win is because they’re decided by the same few people over and over again and they have very clear opinions in what they choose. And more often than not sheer popularity plays a huge role in whether or not a show wins, which is easily determined by an audience member. I really appreciate in contrast the voting process for these awards specifically. The fact that it’s a process involving a rotating nominating population and an open voting population makes it so much more genuine to what people believe.
I have always been interested in how awards shows choose their nominees, as I believe that it is vital to make sure you have a diverse group of nominators and judges because different people have different life experiences that affect how they see and relate to theatrical works. I think that I really like that the Drama League has certain expectations in place to ensure a diverse group of judges, even though the fact that there is a specific quota they need to hit in order to make sure that they keep the judge pool diverse is a little sad. However, I found myself a little perplexed by the voting in terms of how anyone could pay to vote, as I feel like it ruins the whole point of the diversity measures if, in the end, they resort back to “pay to win” modes essentially. I think I understand it from a fundraising perspective, but it’s a bit contradictory.
Awards shows in general are definitely one of those things that are shrouded in a bit of mystery. As someone who is not particularly well-informed about drama awards outside of the Tonys, I thought this was a really interesting article that gave me more insight into other theater awards that I have heard of, but didn’t really understand the significance of or what their award categories were. I was pretty shocked to read about how the Drama League Awards are more focused on directing and the production as a whole, rather than individual acting categories, since I feel like whenever I think about the concept of an awards show, it always includes a “best actor” type category. It was also interesting to read about how wildly different the Drama League and Drama Desk awards are, despite both being pretty prestigious awards. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that anyone can be a voting member for the Drama League, since the concept that I could even just vote in the Drama League awards is pretty entertaining.
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