2012 Elly Awards

I have a pretty-dark view of the SARTA and the Elly Awards, in general, these days, so it's a good thing I didn't go to Sunday evening's award ceremony. Nevertheless, I knew some DMTC folks were nominated, and thus were going.

Indeed, heading east back across the Yolo Causeway Sunday evening, after the Sunday-afternoon performance of "City of Angels", a vehicle next to mine on the freeway honked. I looked up to see (who I believe was) DMTC's Petra F. sitting in the passenger seat, looking cool in her shades, zooming Sac-wards with others for the festivities. It was going to be a party! And why not? I was pretty-sure DMTC would win something, no matter what.

First, congratulations to Steve Isaacson, John Ewing, and the highly-skilled cast of "Chicago", for Musical Direction and Overall Production Elly Awards. A well-deserved win!

Friends at other theaters won awards too. In particular, Darryl Strohl, Amy Jacques-Jones, Lillian Baxter, and the Lack family at Runaway Stage Productions.

Nevertheless, in my view, SARTA rarely awards Ellys just on merit. I'm still flabbergasted that DMTC's 2008 "A Secret Garden" did not win any 2009 Elly nominations, much less awards. Because that show deserved to win too!

No, Ellys are awarded as much because of politics as merit.

In 2009, SARTA was still catching up to the large expansion of community theater in the Sacramento area in the previous twenty years. SARTA's priority then was distributing awards to all the theaters new to SARTA (with a bias towards theaters using professional talent on the sly to enhance production values), and that meant no awards for DMTC, regardless of the value of DMTC's productions.

By 2012, the economic hurricane of the last four years had swept away a number of the new theaters, and even some of the old theaters too. Looking for shelter amid the wreckage, SARTA simply needs DMTC more today than in the past, which means that, after a decade of neglect, they were finally inclined to give DMTC something, given a good excuse.

Times had changed.

But since SARTA doesn't change much, that likely means someone else got the shaft this year instead. Sorry about that. It's just the ever-turning SARTA Wheel of Injustice making its merry rounds.