A Pleasant Surprise

I am a happy boy.

I came home Friday afternoon, and there was a welcome message on my answering machine. "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," the musical I directed last year at the Oak Ridge Community Playhouse, has been nominated for a Knoxville Area Theatre Coalition (KATC) "Best Young People's Production" award. The musical is based on the children's book by Judith Viorst of the same name, and has been a favorite of mine since my wife showed me an old copy years ago and we read it to our kids. "Alexander..." was the first play I directed at the ORCP, although I've been acting and musical directing there for several years.

A show that I performed in, "All Night Strut", was also nominated for "Best Small Production". It was a 5-person musical review of 40's-era music that was very successful and a lot of fun.

Now, here's where all of you come in ;) In the Knoxville News Sentinel on Sunday, January 26 (today!) and Friday, January 31 will be a ballot listing all the nominees in all the categories. If you saw any of these shows that were nominated, vote for your favorites and send them in (and if you didn't see any of them - first of all, shame on you! but second, hey vote anyway and show you support community theatre in East Tennessee). The awards ceremony is on Sunday, March 2 at 7:00pm at the historic Bijou Theatre in Knoxville.

I doubt if they will offer online voting, so those of you who don't get the Sentinel are out of luck - but if they do I'll update it here.

Sure it's not the Tony's, but hey - all of life's relative, right?

UPDATE: Here's a link to the list of nominees. The competition is stiff, and unfortunately another Oak Ridge Playhouse show ("Alice in Wonderland") is also nominated for best Young People's Show (not unfortunately for director Dana Wham and her cast - they did a great job and deserve the nomination - but I'm afraid now the vote will be split). Oh well, we'll see what happens.