Theatre Centre big winner at Doras
Come From Away is audience choice, while Soulpepper, Tapestry Opera also win big
The Soulpepper Theatre Company got going-away presents from the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts on Monday night, just ahead of its month-long trip to New York City.
Soulpepper won five Dora Awards in the General Theatre division. Other big winners were the Theatre Centre, with six wins in Independent Theatre and Dance, and Tapestry Opera, with five in Opera and Musical Theatre. Mirvish-presented Come From Away, the biggest name at the 2017 Doras and fresh off a Tony Award for its Broadway run, took three prizes.
Soulpepper, which begins a residency off-Broadway July 1 at the Signature Theatre, won the evening’s top Dora, Outstanding Production, for Suzan-Lori Parks’ Father Comes Home From the Wars Parts I, II & III.
It also won Outstanding Costume Design for A Doll’s House, Best Ensemble for Incident at Vichy and Outstanding Scenic Design for Kate Hennig’s The Last Wife, which also won Outstanding Female Performance for Maev Beaty.
The Theatre Centre took Outstanding Production and Ensemble for This Is the Point, co-produced with Ahuri Theatre.
It also received the award for Best Lighting for The Magic Hour, coproduced with Jess Dobkin; as well as Outstanding Production, Ensemble and Lighting for what it’s like, co-produced with adelheid.
Tapestry’s five wins all came for Rocking Horse Winner, which took Outstanding Opera Production, Ensemble, Direction, Male Performance (Asitha Tennekoon) and Lighting. Come From Away won Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Musical or Opera and Female Performance for Tony nominee Jenn Colella.
It also took the Audience Choice Award, officially renamed the Jon Kaplan Audience Choice Award, in honour of the NOW Magazine theatre critic who presented the award every year. Kaplan died in April.
Passing Strange, an Obsidian Theatre/Musical Stage Company co-production, earned a surprise win for Outstanding Male Performance for its young lead, Jahlen Barnes, best- ing Come From Away’s Chad Kimball, Matilda the Musical’s Dan Chameroy and Barnes’ own cast mate, Beau Dixon.
Obsidian also shared two Doras with the Shaw Festival for Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold” . . . and the Boys, which went to director Philip Akin and lead actor André Sills.
Another surprise win came for Outstanding New Play in the General Theatre division, which Nick Green took for Body Politic.
The work is his historical look at the queer political magazine published in Toronto in the 1970s, produced by Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and lemonTree Creations.
The Theatre for Young Audiences division heralded a new production and a young independent company, with Bad Hats Theatre getting Outstanding Production, Ensemble and Direction for its holiday production of Peter Pan, which toured to various Toronto breweries and returns to Soulpepper this year.
Anita Majumdar’s Boys With Cars took Outstanding New Play and Individual Performance.
Robert Lepage’s 887, presented by Canadian Stage, won Outstanding Touring Production.
See tapa.ca for a full list of winners.