AWARDS CONTROVERSY
by Jason Loewith on 8/22/2008 04:16:00 PM 

As most readers of this blog know, every fall, a group of dedicated theater-lovers gather to salute the best plays they've seen on professional stages... these are the oft-beloved, oft-criticized Joseph Jefferson Awards, Chicagoland's closest equivalent to New York's Tony Awards, or London's Olivier Awards, or LA's Drama Critics Circle Awards. Next Theatre Company and its artists have been fortunate to receive many of them over the past 27 seasons... and this year's nominations are coming out on Monday, August 25. (Check their website for an update that day!)

Because of Chicago's love of the underdog, and its embrace of the storefront-to-stardom narrative, the Jeff Awards have been remarkably egalitarian for the past 39 years... almost to a fault. Which is to say, the best-funded, most professional world-class theater competes each year against the teeniest theater that can hire a single Equity Actor. But it's one of the things I've always loved about the Jeffs.

Not any more.

Starting this coming year - the Jeffs' 40th anniversary (and coinciding with MY 40th year, by the by) - the Jeff Awards will be tiered. "Large" companies (Steppenwolf, Goodman, Chicago Shakes, and a few others) will not compete with "Medium" companies (like Next) in the Best Production or Design categories. They will, however, all compete in the acting categories together.

This is a difficult muddle to wade through.

When I was asked for my opinion on this issue by the Jeff Committee (they were very inclusive in the decisionmaking earlier this year, to their great credit), I argued that a tier-system in the design categories was an alright idea. For example, last year Keith Parham's light design for ADDING MACHINE - which cost $500, featured about 60 light instruments, and was executed by a Master Electrician and one other person in about 10 hours - competed against (and lost to) John Culbert's design for MIRROR OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD at the Goodman. I'm guessing, but I'm pretty certain you can add a zero after every one of our figures to estimate what the Goodman expended on that design: $5,000, 600 light instruments, and 10 or more personnel working on it for 100 hours or more. And often, the Jeff Committee's love of the underdog means that major productions at places like the Goodman or Steppenwolf are ignored - and that feels ridiculous to me. My only real complaint with the split is that it'll make the ceremony a lot longer.

The main argument most folks have against the tier system, forcefully argued by Chris Jones in his blog for the Tribune, is that it denigrates the awards received by the "Medium" theaters. I hear that complaint, but I'm not sure I buy it.

After all, it's only theater people who care about the intricacies of the Jeff Awards - even local foundations and corporations couldn't care less. Most of them barely know that there is a difference between the Jeff Awards given to the professional theaters in the fall, and the Jeff Awards given to the non-professional theaters (i.e., those that don't hire Equity professional actors like we do) in the spring. And trust me, people outside Chicago are absolutely ignorant of the various awards programs. I routinely get emails from out-of-state colleagues asking why Next didn't get any nominations in the spring awards. And that bugs me. Next Theatre is an Equity company, we invest a lot of money in our professional actors, and we are proud that we compete with other Equity companies in the fall.

What bugs me more about the entire awards controversy, the tier system, and so on, is that the Jeff Awards are pretty much the only awards in town. (I am told by sources close to Gay Chicago Magazine that their After Dark Awards are being phased out - those were the only other major awards we had.) Because every other theater community of note in this country - Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, you name it - has a critic-adjudicated awards program.

Don't misunderstand me: Chicago needs the Jeff Awards, and they should live on for another 40 years and more. The Jeff Committee are Chicagoland's uber-theater-audience; the most dedicated theatergoers in the country, and they love and support all of us. The Jeff Awards are like American Idol for theater, but with only the most-practiced 0.0001% of theatergoers getting to vote. Yes, I mean that as a compliment.

But critic-adjudicated awards programs are qualitatively different, and offer something else to the outside world. While the Jeff Committee members are Chicago specialists, the critics of our major media outlets are hired because of the breadth of their knowledge. Our best critics are in touch with what's happening theater-wise in New York, London, LA, Minneapolis and Moscow; they share the critical and theoretical backgrounds of our best artists; their opinions are vetted by editorial staffs and subjected to the rigor and response of the public.

I'll try to avoid making the sound of sour grapes, but here's an example: our production of Paula Vogel's Long Christmas Ride Home in 2005 was heralded by the critics ("It will fill you with faith in the theater" - TimeOut; "Impeccable and heart-breakingly tender" - Sun Times, "Astonishing in its artistry" - Windy City Times, etc.), but not only didn't get any Jeff nominations... it wasn't even Jeff recommended. Which meant the rest of the Jeff committee did not attend, and the production wasn't eligible for nomination. Of the 21 productions I've produced at Next in my tenure, Long Christmas Ride was one of only two not to be recommended by the Jeff committee. (I agree with their other decision wholeheartedly.)

And that's fine - that production was very gutsy, and very tough for many audience members to take. But the critics recognized its artistic achievement, and a critic-adjudicated awards program (the LA Drama Critics Circle, the NY Drama Critics Circle, etc) would have recognized it.

I had breakfast last week with a former Chicago theater critic who shall not be named here, and I asked him about this glaring lack in our otherwise worldly theater community. He told me there had been attempts over the years to start one because the critics do recognize they could offer something exciting in addition to the Jeff Awards... he also said some other things I won't repeat on this public blog. But mostly, he claimed there were not enough top-tier critics in town to make an appropriate circle.

I certainly don't agree. From the area's dailies to many of its weeklies and radio commentators, we've got some of the savviest critics in the country. Let's add something world-class to the Chicago theater scene: a critic-adjudicated awards program.

Labels: Critics, Jeff Awards

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