AND THE WINNER IS...
This week, the Tony Award Nominations will be announced, and the Tonys will be presented on Sunday June 10. All the articles and hoopla of “awards season” has reminded me of other awards given out for theater, awards that while not in the same echelon as the Tonys, are nevertheless important. I’m talking about those awards given out locally to recognize excellence in live theater productions.
In the Sacramento area, for example, the Elly Awards recognize outstanding work in community and educational theater. BroadwayWorld.com gives out Regional Awards in areas all over the country. Because why should we wait until we’re handed a Tony Award to be acknowledged for doing great work?! As I’ve written before, there is great theater on stages all over the country, not just on Broadway.
Eric and I were there, at the very first Elly Award presentation. It was 1983, and the show we’d worked on at Eleanor McClatchy Performing Arts Center, a spectacular production of Tintypes, was nominated in several categories. The awards ceremony was held in the EMPAC theater, and Tintypes won for Best Musical. The following year, EMPAC became a professional theater, was eventually renamed Sacramento Theatre Company, and many years after that, Eric and I returned to see two of our shows have their world premieres on that same stage where “we” (the production team, actually) had won the first Elly Award.
A few months ago, our musical The Donner Party (now Meet Your Mountain) won Best Musical in the Broadway World Regional Awards. A great honor, and a nice encouragement that the show is appreciated and only beginning its journey towards more success.
But there was another award given to us, one that means so much because of who presented it, and what it represents. In all of the excitement that was The Donner Party World Premiere a year ago, one of many highlights was a one-night event at Sacramento Theatre Company. It was a fund-raising benefit for the theater, and they called it, “Full of Life, A Tribute to Rockwell & Rose.” The bar crafted a cocktail for the evening called the Rockwell & Rose Refresher – I mean, have you ever had a cocktail named after you?! After dinner, local radio celebrity Kitty O’Neal emceed a dessert auction, featuring a Rockwell & Rose cake. The entertainment featured selections from The Donner Party and A Little Princess; one of our original Princesses, all-grown-up-now Lauren Metzinger, flew home from college in order to recreate a duet, sung with Jerry Lee, “I Know You By Heart.”
The event was on a glorious Sacramento spring evening, and everything about the night was wonderful. One of our greatest delights was to find Claudia Kitka as one of the guests in the audience. Claudia is a professor at Sac State, where she had taught our “Voice for Musical Theater” class and had instantly become one of our favorite mentors. Claudia was Eric’s voice teacher throughout his years at Sac State earning his Bachelor of Music degree. To see her again, after all these years – and not looking a day older – was an emotional reunion.
At one point in the evening, Michael Laun made a beautiful speech in tribute to us. He brought us onto the stage and presented us with the Sacramento Theatre Company LEGACY AWARDS. The inscription on the award reads, “LEGACY AWARD 2017 …In Honor of Contributions to Sacramento and Its Arts Community”
Eric and I were honored to receive them, and more than a bit humbled. “Legacy?” (I kept thinking of the marvelous line in The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”) It may be that Rockwell & Rose have made a few contributions to the theater world in Sacramento, but not as many as have been made by the fine theater craftspeople, actors, teachers, and producers who create great theater on the Sacramento stages year after year, without any help from us. What we have contributed to Sacramento?! Whatever it may be, it pales in comparison to what Sacramento has done for us. Our years at CSU Sacramento taught us skills, flamed our passion for musical theater, introduced us to each other, and allowed us to benefit from the mentorship and friendship of some amazing professors: Doc Lason, Bob Waldo, Richard Bay, and Claudia Kitka. The experience of working in the theater -- outside of college -- with EMPAC was a blessing, as were the guidance we found from the professionals there. We are forever grateful to the Sacramento Theatre Company, and especially to Michael Laun – not only for the World Premieres, but also for taking a night to honor us in this way.
How about your local theater community? Do you give out awards to recognize your artists and producers? If not, please think about doing so. After all – it may be awhile before we get to stand on the stage in New York City, receiving our Tony Award. And the award you give to us now may be just the encouragement we need to hang in there, to keep pursuing the dream which will one day lead us to the Tonys.