Monday's OC Weekly Theater Awards were the best-attended in the event's nine-year history. We lost count once we ran out of fingers, but more than 100 souls filed into SCR's Julianne Arygyos Stage theater and watched the best and brightest of Orange County theater get their just desserts plus free vittles from the Quattro Caf, booze from 3 Vodka and additional libation courtesy of Rockstar Energy Drinks. Here's the winners:
LEAD PERFORMANCE, MALE
Jay Fraley Candy and Dorothy, Rude Guerrilla Theater Company
LEAD PERFORMANCE, FEMALE
Jocelyn A. Brown, Goodnight Children Everywhere, Chance Theater
Linda Gehringer, The Retreat from Moscow, South Coast Repertory
SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE, MALE
Steven Lamprinos, Roscoe Spitzer is Afraid of Dying, Stages Theatre
SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE, FEMALE
Jill Cary Martin, Wuthering Heights, Insurgo Theater Movement
Beth Kennedy, The Comedy of Aerosmith,Troubadour Theater Company
BEST ENSEMBLE
Assassins, Hunger Artists Theatre
BEST NEW PLAY
Kristina Leach, The Medea Project, Hunger Artists Theatre
BEST MUSICAL
The Comedy of Aerosmith, Troubadour Theater Company
BEST DIRECTION
Andrew Barnicle, Tabletop, Laguna Playhouse
BEST PRODUCTION
Mr. Marmalade, South Coast Repertory
BEST SOLO PERFORMANCE
Jeremy Gable, The Gog/Magog Project, Hunger Artists Theatre
BEST ENSEMBLE ORIENTED TROUPE
The Chance Theater
MAS COJONES
Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, Blasted.
Our version of the biggest balls award goes to the theater that is least bashful about showing any part of its collective genitilia. The company's production of Sarah Kane's brutally graphic Blasted only played to a few hundred people in Burbank, but it displayed once again that the county's most politicized troupe remains passionately committed to its uncompromisingly visceral artistic aesthetic.
EXCELLENCE IN COLLEGE THEATER
Angels in America, Saddleback College.
HELENA MODJESKA AWARD
Our annual lifetime achievement award this year went to two people who symbolize the hundreds who help sustain any theater community—but are never seen on stage, get a paycheck or are listed in the program: the volunteer ushers, house managers, ticket takers and everyone else. Rachael Mallory has more than 60 years of volunteer ushering experience, beginning as a high school student in Chicago. She began ushering at SCR when it was in its original Newport Boulevard storefront, and opened OCPAC and the Barclay. She currently volunteers at the Laguna Playhouse. Dr. Tim Chin, an SCR volunteer since 1988, was also honored but could not make the ceremony.
Joel Beers has written about theater and other stuff for this infernal rag since its very first issue in, when was that again???