2009 Elly Awards Awarded

The annual awards ceremony was held last night at the Crest Theatre. Apparently DMTC got one Elly Award. Congratulations to Steve Isaacson for "Man of La Mancha" set design.

This year, I would have preferred gouging my eyes out with spoons, or sticking hypodermic needles through my tongue, than attend the awards ceremony, so angry was I about DMTC getting shafted year-after-year for no good reason, and watching mediocrities from other theaters getting undue recognition. Whether I attend the awards ceremony again depends mostly on the quality of SARTA's judging. At the moment, I'm not optimistic, but as always, ever hopeful.

I've been puzzling through the list of nominees and the list of winners trying to establish any rhyme or reason to SARTA's pattern of awards, but have given up the effort. For years, I've felt the Ellys were too much like a lottery, where chance rather than skill determined the winners, and this year just continues the pattern. A meritocracy, this ain't. A casino; maybe. As always, too many good shows and people were ignored.

SARTA's relentless efforts to expand their domain over the northern Sacramento Valley are reaping strange fruits. The Sacramento-area educational and community musical theater scene is very large now. No one person can understand it all. For myself, the more years I spend in the scene, the less I understand it. Like magicians understand, lack-of-understanding, like misdirection, can hide almost anything (including biases).

It's interesting how many ties there were among this year's winners. Ties seem to suggest an inability to make decisions. In a competition, no one is pleased to tie.

Since SARTA's system already seems to have a random element to it, it may be better and fairer to just gather everyone in the Crest Theater, put all the award plaques in a big sack, and throw them out to the attendees from the stage. That way, you at least hit some deserving people, if only by accident. Or maybe put all the award plaques in a big piñata, blindfold Bob Baxter and hand him an enormous bat, and when he swings, hits, and splits the papier-mache Elly donkey, let the winners be decided by brute force in a big mosh-pit brawl. More entertaining to watch than repetitive acceptance speeches.

Looking forward to next year!