CATS OUT OF THE BAG
Who’s up for the big awards?
The cat is out of the bag, or at least the CATS are.
The nominations for the 13th annual CATS or Calgary community theatre awards have been announced.
Front Row Centre Players received a whopping 37 nominations for South Pacific, The Who’s Tommy, Catch Me If You Can and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which comprised the company’s complete season of four musicals.
These four musicals will be competing against each other for outstanding production of a musical.
Competing for best production of a play in the non-musical category are two each from the Dewdney Players (The 39 Steps and Calendar Girls), Morpheus Theatre (The Dinner Party and Death of a Salesman) and Simply Theatre (Inherit the Wind and She Kills Monsters).
Inexplicably Lifey Players’ production of The Field received nine nominations, the most for any single non musical, yet it didn’t score a nomination for outstanding production of a play.
The Field did see nominations for Murray Melnychuk, John Warkentin and Katelyn Morishita in the acting categories and its entire cast received a nomination for outstanding work by an ensemble.
Tanya Wolff received directing nominations for both The Field and her other Lifey Players show Eden.
This year, there are 108 nominations in 23 categories and the nominees were selected through a combination of public input or fan voting and an adjudication panel.
The awards will be handed out on Aug. 27 at the Rozsa Centre on the University of Calgary campus.
The awards show starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets, which are $15, are now on sale through ucalgary. ca/tickets and calgary-acts.com.
For a complete list of this year’s nominees, go to calgaryherald.com.