Please Forgive a Little Back-Patting

The Column Awards (Dallas - Fort Worth area theater awards) were held a couple of nights ago and one show I was associated with cleaned the house!

Uptown Players' production of Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike, in its category of Equity Play, won merely:

Best Play; Best Director (B.J. Cleveland); Best Actor (Bob Hess); Best Actress (Wendy Welch); Best Featured Actress (Julia Golder); Best Scenic Design (as Miss Piggy would say, "Moi!"); Best Lighting Design (Jason Foster), and Best Sound Design (B.J. Cleveland).  Sadly even this role-call leaves out a few great people... I guess we had to leave a few awards for somebody else.  Did we?

Woohoo!

All kidding aside, congratulations to the whole Vanya, Sonya, Masha, and Spike team.  It was a terrific show.  And congratulations to all the other winners and nominees and patient un-ballyhooed-this-year worthies who do such good work all around the DFW area.

Uptown Players' Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike - photo via Uptown

Among those who deserved wins, nominations - heck coronations! -  for this set are set dresser Kevin Brown and TD Dennis Canright and his carpenters, painters, and volunteers.

Your Own Awards

Here in the Dallas Fort Worth area one actor noticed that his friends in the civic theaters and smaller professional theaters were never winning any awards no matter how brilliant their work - because all the awards were going to actors and designers working in bigger, better-funded theaters.

So he started his own awards.

The Column Awards have become a staple of the DFW theater season... even outliving the more "established" awards from the now defunct Dallas Theatre League.  I've always admired the spirit of just up and creating your own award.

But I'm even more impressed with director Philip Lord of The Lego Movie who, not able to compete against the bigger, more blockbuster, more "prestigious,"more non-toy! films for an Oscar, has literally created his own award... from Legos!  His tweet HERE:

LEGO (TM) Oscar  (TM) by Philip Lord

for The Lego Movie

Love it!