2009-10 Elly Award Nominations

Left: SARTA's Leslie Addiego points the way.




After the jolly Buddhist festival Sunday afternoon, it was time to pay penance. Serious penance. We all need a little self-flagellation, now and then, and the 2009-10 Elly Award nominations ceremony seemed like the perfect ticket.

Since 2002, DMTC no longer gathers much in the way of Elly Award nominations. The reasons are complicated, but include:

• As it has for years, SARTA insists on pitting Solano Community College's musical theater program, with its much-larger show budgets, against community musical theaters like DMTC, RSP, & Magic Circle, disadvantaging all of them in the process;
• Professionals are increasingly gathering nominations, which takes away from the community nature of SARTA's supposed mission;
• SARTA keeps expanding its geographic domain, to the point where it is increasingly-difficult for any one theater to get nominations;
• At this time, SARTA appears to be deliberately-favoring either smaller, newer theaters, or bigger-budget larger theaters, skipping over others in the process;
• DMTC does not compete with "Adults in Young People's Plays" categories at all, which further restricts the scope of DMTC's competitiveness (that's a deliberate choice, by the way, but could change, depending on the availability of resources);
• SARTA's judging bench is thin and not terribly expert;
• Plus, I believe SARTA judges have a bias against DMTC, in general, which just makes things worse.

Thus, what DMTC generally gets in the way of nominations is usually very little. Elly Award nomination time is usually a time for debate about whether DMTC should even participate, since we send away nearly $500.00 a year, for very little. I was particularly shocked last year, upon seeing our actors passed over, in favor of mediocrities from other theaters.

SARTA's judging process, which minimizes consultation of judges in favor of scorekeeping - supposedly done in the name of fairness - is not robust enough to prevent inequities from entering the process. No end of inequities can be buried when scoring is the top priority! I'm of the opinion that SARTA does what is best for SARTA, and at this time fairness is not their highest priority.

Sunday evening provided no real surprises. DMTC gathered four nominations.

Afterwards, I mentioned to G. that small theaters seemed to be the priority this year. He thought that ethnic-oriented theaters were favored. I suggested that we should start a small, ethnic theater whose sole purpose would be to gather Elly Award nominations. He noted we both had ethnic blood. I suggested that it's home should be a large closet (in order to keep its demand on resources small). He suggested it should be called "The Melting Pot".

I was happy that friends at other theaters got nominations. I was impressed that Lillian Baxter at RSP got so many costuming nominations, particularly in the Young People's Play category. So, I posed the question:

Why is it that Lillian walks on water?

The answer I got back was:

Because she knows where the stones are!

Sounds about right!

And as always, just to make clear that I speak on behalf of myself and not DMTC, my standard disclaimer:

Marc Valdez, not Davis Musical Theatre Company (DMTC), is responsible for the content of this Web Site.