Ms. Pat (photo: Mindy Tucker | courtesy Loshak PR)
Memphis comedy enthusiasts are in for a treat as the renowned comedian Ms. Pat gears up to hit the stage at Minglewood Hall on March 15th as part of her “Ya Girl Done Made It” comedy tour.
“I honestly didn’t know if I had a big enough audience in Memphis, but people kept asking me to come,” said Ms. Pat. “So I told my agent to book the show and I cannot wait to get there and make my fans happy.”
Ms. Pat, who was raised on the streets of Atlanta, gained recognition in the comedy community for her unreserved and brutally honest humor. She addresses subjects like family dynamics and societal issues by drawing on her personal experiences, all the while delivering punchlines with perfect timing and wit.
It all started with her standup career where she started discussing her life drawing connections from being a convicted felon and the rough streets of Atlanta into connecting with her audience. There was one joke in particular that led to her tw0-time Emmy-nominated BET sitcom, The Ms. Pat Show.
“The more I did interviews, the more I started to paint a picture, and that is when I started to get calls from Hollywood,” says Ms. Pat.
Now that the Ms. Pat Show is on season three, Ms. Pat has been making strides to connect with her audience on different levels. Her standup special Y’all Want to Hear Something Crazy is currently streaming on Netflix.
“I always say I am like a buffet,” says Ms. Pat. “I try to create stuff to where if you don’t like this then maybe you will like this.”
Her weekly court style show, Ms. Pat Settles It, recently premiered on BET. The show resembles the Judge Judy show. The comedian and her jury of comedy friends resolve conflicts that arise on a daily basis.
“I am just so thankful and grateful to be in this position,” said Ms. Pat. “Not only am I doing what I want to do, but I am also helping young and up-and-coming comedians with this tour.” Tickets for the Minglewood show can be found on Ticketmaster and Ms. Pat’s official website.
Check out her 11/6/23 appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers here:
Playhouse’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is sweet, uplifting, and, most importantly, fun. (Photo: Sean Moore)
Having read Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory many times growing up and having seen both the 1971 and 2005 movie adaptations, I thought I knew exactly what to expect walking into Playhouse on the Square’s opening night of the stage musical. However, I’m happy to say that I was entirely mistaken. The production, directed by Dave Landis, told a familiar story in a way I had never seen before, and the entire show was — appropriately — a sublime display of eye candy.
Though the onstage version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory shares quite a few similarities with the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, such as several of the same musical numbers, there are also a few differences. For one thing, this play takes place in a contemporary setting, with many references of modern relevance — Violet Beauregarde’s Instagram following, as one example. These nods to a present-day timeline help make the humor in the musical more accessible to a 2024 audience, and much of that humor is surprisingly dark, though in my opinion all the more funny for it.
The story of this musical is the same one most people have grown up knowing: Plucky daydreamer Charlie Bucket, played on opening night by McCager Carver, wins one of five golden tickets to gain entry to the Wonka Chocolate factory, a place that’s been operating behind mysteriously closed gates for decades by the reclusive genius Willy Wonka. Carver, in his Playhouse debut, absolutely shone as young Charlie Bucket, bringing a mischievous and carefree energy to the character while maintaining what the audience must know about Charlie from the get-go and never question: He is good.
Photo: Sean Moore
As in the ’70s film version, Mr. Bucket is deceased, meaning Mrs. Bucket is a single mother working alone to maintain a household of five dependents, if we’re including the four immobilized grandparents. Amy Polumbo Nabors’ interpretation of the character was slightly different from what I’ve come to expect from the onscreen versions of Mrs. Bucket, less overtly nurturing and more anxious, which makes perfect sense given her circumstances. Still, one moment that I thought was extremely touching took place once the optimistic Charlie starts to lose hope after failing to find a golden ticket in his annual birthday chocolate bar. It’s his seemingly more cynical mother who makes a wish for his dream to come true — a wish that of course comes to fruition. A mother’s love isn’t really of thematic importance in this show, yet it’s nonetheless a hidden linchpin to the plot if you’re paying attention.
Without question, my favorite section of this musical was the introduction of the golden ticket winners. Each one came with their own musical number, and each one was somehow even funnier than the last. A surprising standout was Brooke Papritz as Mrs. Teavee, which would never have been a character I would have thought warranted much attention. Papritz, however, managed to make Mike Teavee’s introduction just as entertaining with an almost entirely solo performance as the other kids’ intros were with all the glitz and glamor an onstage musical has to offer.
The character of Willy Wonka has a duality in this musical, as he disguises himself as a mere chocolate shop owner during the first half of the show. Jimmy Rustenhaven’s Wonka in act one is somewhat quiet and unassuming, though by act two we are introduced to someone who doesn’t seem particularly bothered by occasionally straying over the line that separates eccentric, creative genius from rich, outlandish asshole. Watching that transformation take place was a highlight of the show.
For a musical about chocolate and candy, I expected the production to be visually decadent, an expectation that was met and surpassed. Lindsay Schmeling’s costume design was spectacular to look at, with a variety of textures, colors, sequins, and accessories constantly on display. The reporter Cherry Sundae? Style icon. The choreography of the ensemble was also highly entertaining, at times like watching a delightfully riotous fever dream (I’m thinking particularly of the squirrel ballet that delivers Veruca Salt’s comeuppance).
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has much to offer to Memphis audiences: It’s sweet, uplifting, and, more than anything, fun.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory runs at Playhouse on the Square through February 18th.
Ruby O'Gray at the Ostrander Awards. Photo by Jon W. Sparks.
The local stage community celebrated another season by honoring the best cast, crew members, and productions at the Ostrander Awards ceremonies Sunday, August 27th.
The annual event brought play lovers to the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts & Education at the Orpheum. The numbers favored Theatre Memphis and its Next Stage, which combined to win 21 categories. The top award-winning production was TM’s zany The Play That Goes Wrong, which took seven honors, including top play and ensemble, and awards for director Ann Marie Hall, supporting actress Amy Rush, supporting actor Bruce Huffman, choreographer Courtney Oliver, and scenic designer Jack Netzel-Yates.
The most honored in the musical category was TM’s Mary Poppins with five awards: Russell Lehman for leading actor, Tracy Thomas for feature performer, and Buddy Hart and Rence Phillips for hair, wig, and makeup. Jack Netzel-Yates pulled in two awards for props and scenic design.
The previously announced winner of the 2023 Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award was Ruby O’Gray, who has acted, directed, and produced shows in local theater since 1977. She is the first Black woman to receive the honor. Among her achievements is the Women’s Theatre Festival of Memphis, an event celebrating women’s contributions to the local stage.
Jared Johnson, who directed the musical The Scottsboro Boys at Playhouse on the Square won the plaque for best musical production. The critically acclaimed performance was based on the 1931 story of nine falsely accused Black teenagers, and the profound injustices that followed fueled the Civil Rights Movement. Despite the grim subject matter, the musical is staged as a vaudeville-style variety show. During the production, Johnson described it as “fun, makes you laugh, and is entertaining so it hides the ugly truth in plain sight.”
The Ostrander Award reflects the powerful approach taken to carry the message across. After Sunday night’s award, Johnson said, “It means so much for folks to understand what we were trying to do, which is really communicate about not just how much we should embrace our history, but also about how we should love on it and to just enjoy it even when it’s hard and painful. The beauty in our history is it makes us who we are, but more importantly, it makes us stronger. It makes us wiser so that we can move on. And guess what? If we have that one little conversation, we can mend a lot of the fences holding us back from being able to just love each other. This win, where we celebrate Black artistry and Black brilliance, makes me feel like we’re in a new world where we can recognize all the talents and it just makes me so happy.”
The 39th Ostrander Awards will be held Sunday, August 27th, to celebrate the best work in local collegiate, community, and professional theater.
Changes have been made to the structure of the awards to allow for wider consideration of the variety of productions and the presenting organizations.
Division I includes Circuit Playhouse, Germantown Community Theatre, Hattiloo Theatre, New Moon, Playhouse on the Square, Theatre Memphis, and Theatreworks @ the Square.
Division II is Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre Group, Duke’s Eye Productions, Harrell Theatre, Like Bamboo Productions, Quark Theatre, Rhodes Theatre Guild, Three Diamonds Productions, and University of Memphis.
The primary distinction is whether the theater company has a full-time artistic or technical staff. Those companies without a full-time staff and educational institutions are categorized as Division II.
This year’s recipient of the Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award is Ruby O’Gray. The Ostranders organization says that O’Gray’s devotion to local theater since 1977 “represents the spirit of change and evolution. Her work has been primarily in self-created companies, events, and institutions.”
In 2012, she created The Women’s Theatre Festival of Memphis, Inc., a festival celebrating women’s contributions to theatre, honoring them, and creating an opportunity for their works, performances, networking, and development.
The Ostranders ceremony will be at the Halloran Center Downtown. Lobby doors, with cash bar and light refreshments, open at 6 p.m. There will be performances from the lead nominees and nominees for Outstanding Overall Musical Production. Get tickets at memphisostranders.com beginning July 30. Tickets will be $15 in advance or $20 at the door. All prior Eugart Yerian recipients are admitted free of charge.
39th Ostrander Nominees (2022-2023 Season)
Props Design, Division II
Emily Matusik, Wire in the Garden, Rhodes Theatre Guild
Mary Thomas Hattier, Elf: The Musical, Harrell Theatre
Summer Gallagher, Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls, University of Memphis
Summer Gallagher, Sense and Sensibility, University of Memphis
Brandon and Virginia Ramey in "Cinderella." And Cinderella's father played by Michael Donahue (just kidding) (Credit: Alice Kerley)
I finally got to see Brandon and Virginia Ramey dance. They performed at the Ballet Memphis production of Cinderella April 15th at the Orpheum and they were spectacular.
The Rameys, longtime members of Ballet Memphis who married in 2014, are now co-directors of the Ballet Memphis School and Youth Ballet Memphis, having retired from dancing after this production.
Virginia performed as Cinderella and Brandon was Prince Charming in the ballet classic that featured music by Sergei Prokofiev.
This was the same Cinderella production the Rameys were supposed to dance to a few years ago, but the 2020 Covid lockdown put an end to that along with public performances of just about everything.
As difficult as the lockdown was for performers, there was no shortage of creativity. I got to know the Rameys after doing stories on their inventive pandemic series of time capsule-worthy videos about life when the world as we knew it basically stopped.
One of their filmed-at-home video shorts was about how people had trouble finding toilet paper because of the shortage. Instead of Prince Charming, Brandon was more of a “Prince Charmin.”
In the video, titled “Commode to Joy,” Brandon is excited to find the rare commodity at a market and is seen running down the street with his toilet paper roll.
“It’s unravelling a little bit over my head as I’m bringing it back to the house,” he says. “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony starts and I do a jump with the toilet paper and just start dancing for joy about how I found toilet paper. And Ginny joins me and she starts dancing. It’s fun outside and a lot of room to move. Very energetic and exciting.
“The next thing you know, we get carried away with all this toilet paper. We’re happily rubbing it on our faces, juggling, letting it roll over us.”
They get even more carried away in the video. “We end up rolling the house. It gets stuck everywhere. It’s a mess.” They did recycle some of that toilet paper, so it wouldn’t go to waste, Brandon says. It was the pandemic, after all.
As far as dancing, Virginia said when they announced their retirement from stage work, “We may make guest appearances here and there, but to do what we’ve been doing at this level will not be possible because we have two kids at home and 300 kids at work. We want to be able to really focus on the school and growing the program.”
The April 16th matinee was the couple’s final performance. I asked the Rameys how it felt being on stage this past weekend, knowing this was their last dance, as it were.
“I think I approached my final performance just as I would any other show because it was too difficult to comprehend how big of a deal this one particular day would be in the grand scheme of my life,” Virginia says. “I wanted our last performance to go really well, so I just stayed focused on the choreography and telling the story.
“I definitely got emotional a couple of times throughout the ballet, mostly while dancing with Brandon,” she says, “but I always had to pull it back together for whatever came next. It hasn’t fully set in that it was my last time on stage because I think I will always feel like a dancer even if I’m not performing. I’m just so excited to focus on the school now and that is keeping me from being very sad. It’s also been a wonderful time to look back over my 20-year career and appreciate all the opportunities I was given to play so many different roles. I’m feeling very grateful right now.”
Brandon says, “It was surreal. There were moments that I would feel myself tearing up on stage, but the choreography is just too challenging to dwell on that kind of feeling. The beauty of the ballet — the music and the choreography working together — kept bringing me back in the moment. It was an unforgettable experience.”
From left: David Hammonds as Larry Lamb, S.A. Weakley as Sir Alick, and Michael Kinslow as Rupert Murdoch in "Ink." (Credit: Collin Baker)
Rupert Murdoch is 92 and has an unusually active existence in real life — in the last year alone he’s continued wielding power as a media tycoon, has given depositions and will likely testify in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News, he divorced Jerry Hall, he announced his engagement to someone else, and then called it off (apparently due to her religious zealotry).
And then there’s what’s going on not in real life, particularly the popular HBO series Succession that is based on him and his media empire and family — although the fictionalized account seems to bother the real family quite a lot. Another dramatic work involving him is the play Ink by James Graham, which is closing this weekend at Circuit Playhouse.
The play is fiction but is based on one of the key events in Murdoch’s ascension in the media world when he acquired a failing newspaper in England in 1969 and turned it into a brash tabloid that broke rules aplenty and set a tone in journalism that we still witness today.
The story is about how Murdoch hired a friend of his, Larry Lamb, and charged him with beating the circulation numbers of the competition. The result was a crass mix of sensationalistic news reporting, goofy diversions, pictures of scantily-clad women, and low common denominator entertainment. The Sun diminished the practice of journalism and won the circulation war.
Ink is helmed by Warner Crocker, a Chicago-based director who has done plays in Memphis before. He was fascinated by the play and was eager to do the production.
“I’ve read a lot of scripts all my life,” he says. “You read good ones and you read not so good ones, and every now and then you stumble on one you get an opportunity to direct where you go, ‘this is a story I have to tell.’ This was a piece that talks about a moment in time that not only affected what journalism was going to become, but the changes we have experienced in culture, in politics, and just about every facet of our life.”
Crocker says Murdoch “is one of those individuals who, if the planet is still around 200 years from now, they’ll look back and say, he had an influence on everything and changed everything, for better or worse.”
He says that in his discussion with the cast, he likened the story to Frankenstein. “Murdoch in many ways is Dr. Frankenstein and Larry Lamb becomes the monster,” he says. “Graham presents Murdoch as a product of the moment in time who had this idea about change and didn’t necessarily understand the personal consequences of that. He certainly understood the financial consequences, and that’s what he was reaching for.”
When the changes Murdoch set in motion are underway, he finds that it’s not all a thrilling game and that there are terrible downsides. The cocky publisher is forced to reckon with tragedy. “You wouldn’t think of him as a very vulnerable individual,” Crocker says.
But neither is Murdoch a hero. In fact, as Crocker notes, there are no heroes in this play. “We watch them all take this journey together,” he says. “For example, the newsroom staff that you meet in the play come into it and there’s hesitation to begin with, but then they fall in love with the excitement and the romance of creating something new and the success that they’re having.”
It’s thrilling to break the rules and have so much fun, but before long, the staff’s “journalistic morals are challenged by some of the things that their boss is asking them to do to drive circulation. And then decisions have to be made. Do I compromise who I am and what I believe to hang on to this job? Or am I going to move on?”
Key to the effectiveness of the play is the pacing — snappy dialogue, barbed banter, and wisecracks are blended in with newsroom chaos, pressroom drama, slamming of phones, and tales told literally on multiple levels.
“You have to create a sense of momentum where the show is always going,” Crocker says, “because if you stop and think, give the audience the opportunity to stop and think too much about what they’ve just seen, they’re gonna miss the next beat. It’s history unfolding before your eyes and history doesn’t usually give us a chance these days to pause and think about it. I like to put that on the stage.”
Michael
Kinslow as Rupert Murdoch and David Hammons as Larry Lamb in the Circuit Playhouse production of Ink. (Credit: Collin Baker)
If you think journalism has gone to hell, you won’t get an argument from me.
I don’t hate it — I still practice it and am grateful for the income — but the idea and execution of the industry has morphed over the decades from town criers to scandalous broadsheets to principled news organizations to scandalous tabloids to mindless aggregators. Print ruled for ages, but then radio and TV came in to further reshape it, but in any medium, journalism ultimately has to give the public what it wants — and will pay for.
James Graham’s Ink, now playing at Circuit Playhouse, brilliantly describes one of those defining shifts in the newspaper era when, in 1969, a 38-year-old, pre-tycoon Rupert Murdoch bought a failing British rag. To run The Sun, he hired his friend Larry Lamb away from a competitor and challenged him to boost the numbers to surpass the fusty broadsheet that had long led in circulation in the UK.
There’s plenty of newsroom energy in the Circuit Playhouse production of Ink. (Credit: Collin Baker)
The play visits all the topics that journalists talk about — newsworthiness, ethics, objectivity — and one of the key insights into the thinking of the new endeavor from Murdoch/Lamb comes in a discussion of the five W’s: who, what, when, where, and why.
But Lamb challenges the need for that last W: “The only thing worth asking isn’t why — it’s: what’s next?”
That philosophy isn’t deep, but sets the stage for how storytelling in newspapers would be trending along with the clearly understood primary goal of making money. Its duty to inform the public would be done by entertaining and titillating readers, not by crafting thoughtful stories for the civic minded. And The Sun would show how a news organization could shape what was next.
The Circuit staging is helmed by Chicago-based Warner Crocker, who keeps the action snappy whether its dialogue between Murdoch (Michael Kinslow) and Lamb (David Hammonds), or chaotic newsroom scenes with the entire cast throwing newspaper bundles, barking into phones, typing furiously, posing for pictures, cracking wise, and arguing tirelessly.
Graham’s script is crisp and purposeful, propelling the story, revealing the characters, and amping up the stakes. It doesn’t set up Murdoch or Lamb as good guys or bad. They have their dreams and in Act One, you may well find yourself pulling for their audacious enterprise to succeed — they are, after all, trying to stick it to the power structure. Act Two keeps the energy but gets inside the consequences of their newspaper’s brashness. How flippant can you be in a life-or-death situation?
The Circuit cast is solid and the production smartly executed. It’s entertaining from the get-go and stirs up enough issues to provoke discussions long after the final bows.
More than 50 years later, Murdoch is still around and still intent on making money from the news business — hence his multi-billion-dollar company named News Corp. His publishing legacy will include taking bold risks and shaping global news coverage as well as shamelessly pushing lies, agendas, and the lowest common denominator.
Ink runs through April 16th at Circuit Playhouse. For info and tickets, go to playhouseonthesquare.org.
Quark Theatre’s show opening this weekend isn’t exactly opening this week. It opened a while back but has been on something of a hiatus. For two and a half years.
The show — what happens to the hope at the end of the evening — had its Memphis debut in March of 2020. It was performed twice before Covid-19 shut it down.
“We thought we’d be back to finish the run in two or three months,” said Tony Isbell, director of the production and a founder of Quark. “Well, two or three months turned into almost two and a half years, but here we are, we are finishing the run.”
The pandemic was an effective crash course in the virtues of patience. Quark, being small and able to quickly adapt, bided its time until it could get back to its mission of doing “small shows about big ideas.”
“We try to produce shows that no other theater in Memphis would produce,” Isbell said. “Not because they’re bad shows, but because people maybe haven’t heard of them or they could not guarantee that they would be able to get enough of an audience to make a profit. Quark doesn’t have to worry about that.”
Isbell got to do this unconventional show in an unconventional way.
“I found the playwright’s email address,” he said. “I emailed him and said, ‘Do you ever license your shows for other people to do?’ He said yes and sent me the script, and I said that we wanted to do it.”
There are actually two playwrights. Isbell had communicated with Tim Crouch, who has had a long involvement with the other writer, Andy Smith.
“Smith writes very kind of cerebral, intellectual, presentational plays where he talks directly to the audience and he invites them to think about what theater is and how it can affect the lives of people who see it,” Isbell said. “Crouch’s plays are more about how people can become involved in the theatrical process.”
The two characters in the play reflect the two playwrights and their approaches. Marques Brown plays Andy and Isbell’s character is known only as Friend. And the plot is pretty simple, dealing with two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a few years.
“They reunite and they find out that each of them has gone in different directions, and neither of them could have expected what the other one is doing,” Isbell said.
But don’t be fooled by that somewhat conventional description.
“The thing that I found really interesting about it was that it’s also about two different styles of theater,” Isbell said. “Andy is a character based on a real person. He sits, literally sits, on a stool on one side of the stage. He reads all of his lines from the script — he doesn’t act them in the traditional sense. My character comes into this world and wants to have what we consider a ‘realistic’ encounter. As the play goes on, my character says several times, ‘Come join me. Come over here, be with me.’ And Andy’s character keeps saying, ‘I’m fine. I don’t want to come over there. I don’t want to get involved.’ It leads to whole lot of humor because there are these clashes between these two different kinds of theater, the kind of abstract intellectual presentational and the very emotional, active kind of wound-up theater.”
The show, Isbell said, is funny, very poignant, and kind of sad.
“It’s like many Quark shows,” he says. “We want people to come and be entertained. We also want them to think about what they’ve seen and think about the ideas in each show that we do.”
In August, Quark came back on the scene with a remount of its 2019 production of Wakey, Wakey with Adam Remsen. That recent production, as well as this one of what happens, are on the stage at Germantown Community Theatre. But Quark’s usual home is TheatreSouth at the First Congo Church and it will stage two more shows there this season, one in January and another in April.
Performances of what happens to the hope at the end of the evening are September 29th and 30th, October 1stand 2nd; and then the following week on October 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th. The 6 p.m. performance on October 9th is pay what you can. Tickets are available at quarktheatre.com.
Lindsay Roberts, Brent Davis, and some photobombing reporter from the Memphis Flyer. (Photo by Brent Davis).
Don’t tell a performer to not perform. Silence the singer, still the dancer, hide the actor, shut down the crew — but sooner or later they’ll be back on stage putting heart and soul into it. The Covid-19 pandemic was successful for a while, lousing up plans and performances, but it would not last.
The local theater community put up with what had to be done, closing doors and keeping stages quiet for as long as it took, but after two years of being shut down, Memphis performers got back into it with even more enthusiasm than before.
It was seen as clearly as it could possibly have been at Sunday night’s Ostrander Awards ceremony that celebrated the people and productions in collegiate, community, and professional theaters.
“Planning for the 38th Ostranders was almost surreal,” said Elizabeth Perkins, director of the usually annual event. “It had been so long since we had been together. I can’t believe it finally happened after three years! The night was full of laughter, tears, hugs, and, most importantly, love for everyone in our community. Being backstage as the award winners and performers exit is the best seat in the entire venue. I get to see the smiles on their faces after they get to do what they love doing the most and I get to be a small part of making that happen.”
The gathering seemed to agree, whether they took home a plaque or not (see the winners here). As one might expect, attendees were dressed to the nines. Here are some of those who came to celebrate. (Photos by Jon Sparks).
Curtis C. Jackson, Courtney Oliver, Ann Marie HallElizabeth Perkins, director of the Ostranders.Ashley Whitten Kopera and Jaclyn SuffelEmily Draffen and Stephen GarrettMary Buchignani and John HemphillPerformance at the Ostranders Sunday nightBilly PullenJimmy Hoxie
The celebration of live theater in Memphis was put off for two years (thanks, pandemic) but returned to the stage Sunday night with awards in dozens of categories and much conviviality at the Halloran Centre.
The 38th Memphis theater awards recognized excellence in collegiate, community, and professional theater.
Winning 11 awards was the musical Urinetown staged at Theatre Memphis. And it was a very good evening overall for Theatre Memphis, which took 28 of the 32 awards in the Community and Professional category.
There were 14 college division awards, all going to the University of Memphis. In past years, Rhodes College was a frequent winner, but in 2021 the school decided to phase out its theater major, effectively taking it out of Ostrander consideration.
The Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Stephen Hancock, a playwright, Ostrander-winning director, and longtime professor at the University of Memphis.
Because last year’s event was postponed, winners from 2021 were also honored.
Last year’s Eugart Yerian Award went to Andy Saunders. Others include the 2021 Janie McCrary Putting it Together Award, Michael Compton; the 2021 Otis Smith Legacy Dance Award, Whitney Branan; the Behind the Scenes Award, Lena Wallace Black; and the Larry Riley Rising Star Award, Donald Sutton and Abby Teel.
Andy Saunders (Credit: Alan Howell).
Ann Marie Hall, winner of the Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, won an Ostrander Sunday evening for direction of a musical (Urinetown). She was as delighted as anyone to be back with a cheery crowd of theater people. “It’s been remarked many times that this is a community,” she said. “It’s wonderful how they share going to different shows in different places.”
Here’s the list:
Community and Professional Division
Excellence in Scenic Design for a Play: Jack Netzel-Yates, The Secret Garden, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Excellence in Scenic Design for a Musical: Jack Netzel-Yates, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Costume Design for a Play: Ashley Selberg, The Secret Garden, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Costume Design for a Musical: Amie Eoff, Ragtime, Theatre Memphis
Hair/Wig/Makeup Design for a Play: Ashley Selberg, The Secret Garden, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Hair/Wig/Makeup Design for a Musical: Amie Eoff, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Props Design for a Play: Jack Netzel-Yates, You Can’t Take It With You, Theatre Memphis
Props Design for a Musical: Jack Netzel-Yates, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Special Award: Aliza Moran & Julia Hinson, Puppetry, Shockheaded Peter, New Moon Theatre
Lighting Design for a Play: Mandy Kay Heath, American Son, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Lighting Design for a Musical: Mandy Kay Heath, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Sound Design for a Play: David Newsome, Cicada, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Sound Design for a Musical: Jason Eschhofen, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Music Direction for a Musical: Jeff Brewer, Ragtime, Theatre Memphis
Choreography for a Musical: Daniel Stuart Nelson, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Playhouse on the Square
Featured Performer in a Play: Susan Brindley, You Can’t Take It With You, Theatre Memphis
Featured Performer in a Musical: Atam Woodruff, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Supporting Actor in a Play: Marcus Cox, American Son, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Supporting Actor in a Musical: JD Willis, Ragtime, Theatre Memphis
Supporting Actress in a Play: Cecelia Wingate, Cicada, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Supporting Actress in a Musical: Cassie Thompson, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Ensemble in a Play: American Son, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Ensemble in a Musical: Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Leading Actor in a Play: Kevar Maffitt, Torch Song, Circuit Playhouse
Leading Actor in a Musical: Bruce Huffman, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Leading Actress in a Play: Jessica “Jai” Johnson, American Son, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Leading Actress in a Musical: Lauren Duckworth, Ragtime, Theatre Memphis
Best Original Script: Tumbling Down, Hattiloo
Direction of a Play: Jared Thomas Johnson, American Son, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Direction of a Musical: Ann Marie Hall, Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
Best Production of a Play: American Son, Next Stage, Theatre Memphis
Best Production of a Musical: Urinetown, Theatre Memphis
College Division
Excellence in Scenic Design for College: Brian Ruggaber, A Bright Room Called Day, University of Memphis
Costume Design for College: Ali Filipovich, A Bright Room Called Day, University of Memphis
Lighting Design for College: Corinne Fann, A Bright Room Called Day, University of Memphis
Sound Design for College: Micki McCormick, A Bright Room Called Day, University of Memphis
Music Direction for College: Tracy Thomas, Ordinary Days, University of Memphis
Choreography for College: Michael Medcalf, The Wolves, University of Memphis
Featured Performer in a College Production: Zy Palmer, A Bright Room Called Day, University of Memphis
Supporting Actor in a College Production: Jasper Lane Pippin, A Bright Room Called Day, University of Memphis
Supporting Actress in a College Production: Aly Milan, The Wolves, The University of Memphis
Ensemble in a College Production: Ordinary Days, The University of Memphis
Leading Actor in a College Production: Will Draper, R & J & Z, The University of Memphis
Leading Actress in a College Production: Raina Williams, A Bright Room Called Day, The University of Memphis
Direction of a College Production: Holly Derr, The Wolves, University of Memphis
Best College Production: The Wolves, University of Memphis
