So Over the Ovations
Local 2008 stage awards bring the boredom
By Don Shirley
The competition is almost over. Within a few weeks we’ll know the results. No, not those results. We’re talking about the Ovation Awards, L.A. Stage Alliance’s annual would-be-Tony-Awards shebang. This year’s version takes place Nov. 17 at Cal State L.A.’s Luckman Fine Arts Complex.
The home page of 2008 OvationAwards.com features a countdown of the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds that remain in which you can buy tickets for the ceremony – much like Christmas shopping or NASA countdowns.
Nice try, but the Ovations don’t generate quite as much anticipatory buzz as Santa Claus or a space launch – or even the George Bush Countdown Clock. I’m sure the nominees and their friends and families care. But if anyone else ever brings up the subject in conversation, it’s usually a theater devotee who wants to complain about the Ovations, not someone who’s speculating about who might win.
One clue to help explain why these awards haven’t gripped the public imagination is in the titles of the shows that this year grabbed the most nominations: Miss Saigon (11), All Shook Up (10), Jekyll and Hyde (9), Singin’ in the Rain (9). Ho-hum.
Except for All Shook Up, these are well-worn musicals (and even All Shook Up was in a touring version in Orange County shortly before its nominated production in Long Beach). I heard no reports that any of these productions cast new light on old routines – and the old routines in these four shows are not exactly the makings of universally acclaimed masterpieces. I admit it – even though I see about 300 shows each year, I saw none of these four productions.
All four took place in L.A.’s fringes – Redondo Beach, Long Beach, and Thousand Oaks. All had relatively brief runs of two or three weeks for mostly local crowds. So there wasn’t much time for any favorable word of mouth to spread to the wider L.A. audiences, including the Ovations voters.
However, a show needs only 12 Ovation voters – out of 200 in 2007-08 or 265 in 2008-09 – to qualify for the awards. The results are then based on proportions of impressed voters. If the right 12 voters see a show and all of them like it, its chances are better than those of a show that was seen by 200 voters, even if 190 like the latter.
Regardless of anyone’s opinion of these rules, they sometimes produce an unusually bland group of front-runners. Sure, there are fresher titles lower on the list of most-nominated productions (Secrets of the Trade and The Quality of Life, two premieres, received six nominations each). But if, say, Jekyll and Hyde were to win the most Ovations and if that victory were reported in, say, American Theatre magazine, it would make L.A.’s theater scene look like Podunk’s. The Ovations should spread the word about the originality and diversity of L.A.’s theater. Such results would be counter-productive.
Why are only 12 voters required to see a qualifying show – and why is each voter required to see only 25 shows? Because of L.A.’s notorious distances? Boo-hoo. The voting pool should be reduced only to those voters who commit to seeing at least 50 or 75 or even 100 shows. If there were fewer but better informed voters, maybe L.A. Stage Alliance could arrange to pay a gas stipend.
Yet for the 2008-09 season, artistic directors of L.A. Stage Alliance member organizations qualify as voters if they see a mere 10 productions (not their own). That’s the kind of change I can’t believe in. Another change for 2008-09 is slightly more promising – voters are encouraged to participate in a system that assigns them to see a few shows not of their own choosing, focusing on contenders that are having trouble rounding up even 12 voters. That might help, a little.
But the Ovation system isn’t about to deserve standing ovations any time soon.
Published: 10/22/2008
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