The 36th annual Dora Mavor Moore Awards, celebrating excellence in the city’s performing arts community, were announced on Monday (June 22). They included 48 awards as well as ancillary prizes, the former drawn from 212 eligible productions staged by 117 producing companies.
Held for the second year at Harbourfront Centre’s outdoor WestJet Stage, the event – named for Toronto theatre pioneer Dora Mavor Moore — was hosted by Gavin Crawford, in good form as himself and several outrageous characters.
Here are five evening highlights:
1. The show opened with an offstage voice announcing premier Kathleen Wynne…and out popped Crawford to do his wicked impersonation of the politician, who referred to herself as “the queen Ontario lesbian.” The five-minute routine that followed regularly lambasted Stephen Harper, talked about Wynne’s love of running and made mincemeat of several of the nominees, including Once, called “a musical exclusively for heterosexuals.” The routine ended with a glitter-and-sizzle rendition of the Damn Yankees song You Gotta Have Heart (or was that You Gotta Have Art?), complete with a back-up chorus drawn from students at the Sheridan College music theatre performance program.
2. Beatriz Pizano, winner of outstanding performance by a female in the independent theatre division for her work in Blood Wedding (Bodas De Sangre), started the snowballing comments about the importance of collaboration in creating art. Blood Wedding, a first-rate co-pro between Modern Times Stage Company and Aluna Theatre, ended the evening with six awards. Pizano talked about her pride in being part of the theatre community and confided that she had to get drunk to ask director Soheil Parsa (also a Dora winner for the show) for her role.
3. Mike Ross, one of the evening’s most gleeful recipients (for outstanding musical direction for Soulpepper’s Spoon River, which also picked up a Dora for outstanding new musical/opera and is rumoured to be returning to Soulpepper next fall), shared the honours with the rest of the company, though he “drove the bus musically.” He thanked lots of Soulpepper people, including performers he’d convinced to play instruments they’d never picked up before, the office staff, director Albert Schultz and his pregnant wife, due to deliver in 10 days.
4. Another exuberant acceptor, Kawa Ada (performance by a male in the general theatre division for another Soulpepper show, Accidental Death Of An Anarchist, which also copped the outstanding production prize), raised the temperature of the evening by proclaiming his delight that “this little gay boy from Afghanistan raised on Bollywood could go on to become a leading man.” And he continued: “never be told that you’re too gay or too brown or too much in love with musical theatre…fight for diversity on our stages.”
5. Companies eligible for Doras must be members of the evening’s producer, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA). But one of the ancillary prizes, the Audience Choice Award, sponsored by NOW and Yonge-Dundas Square, doesn’t have to be. Now in its 10th year, the award has gone to both indie companies and commercial producers. This year’s winner, Brantwood: 1920-2020, won through write-in votes, and the announcement of the recipient drew a tremendous roar of approval from the audience. Accepting the prize were writer/directors Mitchell Cushman and Julie Tepperman, along with one of the show’s composers, Anika Johnson, and Sheridan College’s Michael Rubinoff, who spearheaded the show through the college’s Canadian Music Theatre Project. Rubinoff was a co-recipient of the first audience choice prize, which went to BoyGroove. Brantwood, a site-specific show that had viewers follow various plots and dozens of performers through a former school building, is a production that could and should have further life.
Wynne/Crawford noted early in the evening, “you need an abandoned school downtown as a venue? I think my government can help you with that.” Yes, it was a joke, but I hope the company finds a venue and remounts the extraordinary show.
For all the Dora recipients, see tapa.ca.
