Ovation Awards begin a new act

It’s the biggest theater game in town.

We’re talking about Theatre LA’s Ovation Awards, L.A.’s only peer-judged professional theater competition.

Indeed, judging from how many productions are eligible, the Ovations tower over some much better-known competitions. For the 2001-02 Ovations, to be presented Sunday at L.A.’s Orpheum Theatre, 348 productions vied. That easily tops the numbers of shows that were eligible for the 2002 Tony Awards (32), Joseph Jefferson Awards in Chicago (237, in two competitions) or Helen Hayes Awards in Washington (181).

The Ovations lack the televised visibility and commercial influence of the Tonys. In L.A., with only rare exceptions, Ovation-nominated shows have closed before the awards ceremony occurs, so immediate box office dividends are not likely.

But the Ovations have had other effects. James Blackman, who runs Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities, brought a cluster of about 20 civic leaders from Redondo Beach to the Ovations ceremony in 2000, at the Ahmanson Theatre. When he accepted a production award, he looked out at his guests and asked, “Can I have my lobby now?”

Yes, they replied -- within months the city was financing an $11-million renovation of the lobby and other areas within the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, where Blackman’s group performs. The renovation is now complete. And Blackman gives the Ovations at least partial credit.

This year’s Ovation nominees emerged from the biggest procedural changes since the Ovations became competitive awards in 1993.

For 2001-02, a rule that prohibited voters from assessing contenders with whom they shared ties of “blood, love or money” was removed on the grounds that it couldn’t be policed. The only remnant of the rule is that voters have to be able to see the entire production from the audience; actors, for example, are not supposed to vote for any elements of shows in which they were onstage.

Sound designer and Ovation voter Bob Blackburn gave himself a 9 for his design of “Street Stories,” which he thought was his best work of the year, and for which he indeed was nominated. He also rated his work on several other shows, giving himself a 5 for his worst effort.

“I was surprised when they said you could vote for yourself,” he said. He noted that experiencing his shows several times was different from experiencing other shows only once. He voted on 26 shows, generally rating his competition in the 5-to-7 range.

However, lighting designer and voter Rand Ryan said he didn’t vote on productions on which he worked, in part because “I’m a harsher critic of myself than I would be of someone else. It’s probably better just to experience a show instead of knowing what happened up to opening night.”

Also in 2001-02, the number of potential nominees in categories with more than 50 contenders was raised from five to seven, and the number of potential winners in these categories grew from one to three. The actual number of winners won’t be known until Sunday, said Jon Lawrence Rivera, who headed the committee that changed the rule; it will depend on how the contenders’ mean scores are clustered. If contender A has a 9.9, contender B has a 9.8 and contenders C and D each scored 9.6, only A and B would win.

Increasing the number of honors in well-populated categories “reflects more of what is the best of L.A. theater,” Rivera said.

But director and former Ovation winner Tracy Young said multiple winners “might dilute some of the prestige” of the award. Several Ovation observers said they would wait and see if they like this rule change until they see how long the ceremony is extended because of extra acceptance speeches.

The voting pool was enlarged last year from 121 to 188. Potential voters were asked to list several highlights of their L.A. theatergoing in an attempt to make sure that the voters’ theatergoing was geographically diverse. Shashin Desai, whose International City Theatre in Long Beach had once withdrawn from the Ovations because so few voters ventured to Long Beach, said he was satisfied with voter turnout in 2001-02; at least 10 voters showed up for each production, compared to none “or maybe one” several years ago.

As of last July, the latest date for which figures were complete, 86% of the registered shows had been seen by the required minimum of eight voters.

A few companies still don’t lure enough voters to qualify or don’t participate. Bilingual Foundation of the Arts withdrew several years ago because voters failed to appear or unwittingly turned up at Spanish-language performances without being able to understand Spanish, said president Carmen Zapata.

Nancy Davis, a former voter and former Theatre LA board member, said “no one ever came to see our shows” at her Towne Street Theatre, so the company dropped out. Kosmond Russell’s Stage 52 participates in the Ovations but never gets enough voters to qualify, he said. Both Towne Street and Stage 52 are African American companies and active participants in the NAACP Theatre Awards. Russell said he feels black and white theater voters sometimes “get in comfort zones and have a tendency not to reach out. It’s not a proper approach; it’s just the easiest approach.”

The Evidence Room, one of L.A.’s most famous smaller theaters, stopped registering its shows for Ovations. Although artistic director Bart DeLorenzo applauds Theatre LA, the voters “were a hard group of people to deal with.” He found himself distributing ballots and free tickets to actors who had been turned down for roles in the same shows they were judging. With different voters seeing different sets of shows, it’s “a very strange process,” he said. “But it’s not like I have a better idea of how it should be done.”

After eight voters have seen a show, a producer can stop issuing free tickets and ballots to additional voters. Actress and director Jacque Lynn Colton voted on 128 productions in 2001-02 -- more than any other voter. “It was like being in heaven,” she said, but she still found some productions closed to her because of producers’ “first come, first served” policies. Other producers don’t give the Ovation voters very good seats, she noted. A former Tony voter, she said the New York producers gave voters great seats.

Producer Ed Gaynes, a former Tony and Ovations voter, agreed that shows “should be open to all voters, not just the first eight. That’s too easy to manipulate. The Ovations would be more exalted if producers treated it as important.”

Producer Geo Hartley had scheduled his musical “Twisted” to open last August, a week before the end of the Ovations year. After publicizing his show to Ovation voters, he was confident he had enough Ovation voters’ reservations before the end of August for the show to qualify. He was nervous when he had to postpone the opening until Aug. 31, but 11 voters responded that yes, they could move their reservations to that one night.

That night, however, he received a call shortly before show time from actress Frankie Anne. She was in an auto accident. Hartley said he was willing to cancel the performance, but Anne vowed that she would make it on time. A witness to the accident drove her to the theater. She favored her uninjured leg when she danced. At intermission, one of the voters had to leave because of apparent labor pains. But 10 remained, and the show was rewarded with one Ovation nomination, for world premiere musical.

Hartley said Anne’s words from the accident site are hard to forget. “I’ve gotta be there for the Ovation voters,” she said.