2016 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Awards
August 29, 2016 Leave a comment
“Mother Emanuel,” a celebration of the lives of the nine gunned down in a South Carolina church, and “The Radicalization of Rolfe,” which looks at the Sound of Music from the point of view of a gay Nazi, were two of the winners of the 2016 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Awards.
Complete list:
Overall Play:
Pucker Up and Blow
The Radicalization of Rolfe
Black Magic
Overall Musical:
Mother Emanuel
Direction:
Kristin Skye Hoffmann – Dream Ticket
Leslie Kincaid Burby – Zamboni
Jessi D. Hill – Brewed
Ensemble:
The Gorges Motel
Colorblind’d
The Further Adventures of…
ChipandGus
Solo Performance:
The Box Show
Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan
At The Flash
Pryor Truth
Rent Control
Playwrighting:
Kevin R. Free – Night of the Living N-Word!!
Dahn Hiuni – Murmurs & Incantations
Meghan Gambling – Bonnie’s Future Sisters
Louis Aquiler & Chris D’Amato – Dementia Americana
Acting:
Taylor Turner – The Illusory Adventures of a Dreamer
Nadia Brown – Hysterical!
Meg Kelly – Kerrmoor
Dave Droxler – Walken on Sunshine
Choreography:
Tom Gold – Joey Variations
Scenic Design:
Jason Lee Courson – Cyrano: a love letter to a friendship
Music/Lyrics:
Aaron Michael Krueger – Super!
Music Composition:
Matthew Lowy – Fallen Skies
Ben Singer – At the Crossroads: Music for Faust
TheaterMania Audience Favorite:
Walken on Sunshine
The winners were selected by an independent panel of more than 30 theater professionals
She Loves Me, American Psycho and Bright Star lead the nominations for the 61st annual Drama Desk Awards, which honors achievement by professional theater artists on Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway. Sixty-four shows were nominated at least once. The complete list is below:
An announcement on the Tony Awards website means that the Tonys, which has never honored Off-Broadway, may finally begin to do so, at least in a small way.
The Assembled Parties
Bring It On: The Musical
A Christmas Story, The Musical
A Christmas Story, The Musical
Golden Boy
Annie
Tom Hanks Lucky Guy
Laurie Metcalf The Other Place
Bertie Carvel Matilda The Musical
Stephanie J. Block
Danny Burstein
Carrie Coon
Charl Brown
Annaleigh Ashford
*Pam MacKinnon
Scott Ellis
*John Lee Beatty
*Rob Howell
Soutra Gilmour
Gregg Barnes
*Jules Fisher & Peggy Eisenhauer
John Gromada
Pippin and Motown were the winners in the 2013 Fred & Adele Astaire Awards celebrating dance on stage and on screen.
town and don’t even see all the shows they’re voting on. Who are 
these voters? Many are theater artists; most seem to be in the business of commercial theater. Only 25 are critics; the rest of the critics are excluded under the Orwellian/Alice in Wonderland argument that we can’t be impartial since we’ve gone public with our opinions. Meanwhile, the decision-making is allowed into the hands of people who have a financial interest in the outcome.
established in 1947? The answer is simple: The Tony Awards show is the only one that is televised on a broadcast network. It is the only opportunity each year for millions of theater lovers to catch up on what’s happening on New York stages. Its influence is profound: Billy Porter, nominee this year for best performance of an actor in a leading role in a musical, says it was watching Jennifer Holliday perform in the 1982 Tony Awards that persuaded the then-12-year-old Pittsburgh native to become a professional performer.
Nominees: The Assembled Parties; Lucky Guy; The Testament of Mary; Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
My choice: 
My choice: Nathan Lane, 
My choice: Rob McClure, Chaplin
Nominees: Scott Ellis The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Jerry Mitchell Kinky Boots; Diane Paulus Pippin; Matthew Warchus Matilda The Musical
Nominees: Chris Nightingale Matilda The Musical; Stephen Oremus Kinky Boots; Ethan Popp & Bryan Crook Motown The Musical; Danny Troob Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella
Nominees: Gregg Barnes Kinky Boots; Rob Howell Matilda The Musical; Dominique Lemieux Pippin; William Ivey Long Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella
Nominees: Kenneth Posner Kinky Boots; Kenneth Posner Pippin; Kenneth Posner; Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella; Hugh Vanstone Matilda The Musical
The big winners of the 58th Annual Drama Desk Awards included Matilda, which won the most number of awards, five, including Outstanding Musical, and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, which won three, including Outstanding Play, Outstanding Director of a Play, and leading actor. The other three leading actor awards went to Cicely Tyson (Trip to Bountiful), Billy Porter (Kinky Boots), and Laura Osnes (Cinderella). Other shows singled out for honors: Pippin, Here Lies Love, and Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike.
This year Sondheim and Chekhov and Tom Hanks and Vanessa Redgrave share honors with a bus. 
In-between the performances and the simulation, the two tour guides offer the typical sightseeing patter of corny jokes, half-hearted quizzes, and interesting trivia mixed in with deliberate or inadvertently inaccurate information about New York City. (Purists need look no further for errors than the bus itself, which misspells “The Book of Mormon.”) The best thing about the ride is the reaction and interaction from (the real) passersby. Two young men started dancing as if they were part of the professional entertainment.
