Montie Awards Ceremony 2018

On Saturday, August 11 at 8:00pm, members of The Players Theatre Company and Stage Right of Texas crowded into the historic Crighton Theatre for the seventh annual Montie Awards ceremony.

I've previously covered the Montie Awards in a blog post on August 2. In that one, I talked about the history of the awards and talked about my history of nominations as well as this year's ceremony.

The ceremony this year was relatively brisk. All 25 awards were given out in 2 and a half hours. Every few categories, they had performances from the musicals produced this year. As with the Tony awards, the performances are my favorite part of the ceremony every year.

Three of those performances were from musicals I directed this last year. From Beauty and the Beast, we had the title song, sung by Kim Lambright, who won the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical moments before.

From Little Women: The Musical, Lizzie Camp sang "Astonishing". And the cast of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee reunited for the hair-raising "The I Love You Song", which justly received a standing ovation.

I genuinely had goosebumps during all three performances. I'm so proud of the work all of these people did.

I think I've said enough good things to go ahead and admit that I did not win the award I was nominated for. I was disappointed, but I think the rest of the evening made up for it.

Two actresses I directed won awards for their roles. Kim Lambright, as I mentioned, won "Best Supporting Actress in a Musical". In addition, Terry Woods, who played Aunt March in Little Women, received the award for "Best Featured Actress in a Musical".

In addition, a number of actors and actresses I've worked with received awards. They are far too numerous for me to list here without fearing that I'll miss someone, so see the full list of nominees and winners available on the Monties website.

It's always an honor to be nominated, and to see a lot of genuine love for the theater come out of the awards. All throughout the acceptance speeches, I heard through lines of community, a sense of family, of a love for moving the audience.

There are always winners and losers in an awards scenario, but the important thing is to keep that big picture in mind. We are artists for the love of three things:

  • The art we create
  • The audience we interact with
  • The other artists we collaborate with

Everything else is secondary. 

The Montie Awards 2018

I am thrilled to announce that I have been nominated twice in the Best Music Direction category for The Montie Awards 2018! Here's a quick rundown of the situation:

What are the Montie Awards?

The theatre where I regularly work (The Players Theatre Company, Conroe, TX), is one of two theatre companies in the downtown Conroe area. It sits just across the square from Stage Right of Texas, the other theatre company.

For the last six years, the two companies organized The Montie Awards as a kind of local Tony Awards, complete with featured performers from last year (three shows I directed are performing, see below). In all of the typical categories, four nominees are named based on the 13 shows performed during the previous season. (six by Stage Right, and seven by the Players)

What is my history with the Montie Awards?

Since I have been involved with The Players, I have been fortunate to be nominated every year.

In year one (2015-2016 season), I was nominated, along with my co-director Sal Jiminez for Meet Me in St. Louis, which we collaborated on. This was especially exciting, as it was my first community theatre show.

In the 2016-2017 season, I was nominated for West Side Story, and ultimately won. I was immensely gratified, as this show won a number of awards, including my own. Sadly, it did not win Best Show of the Year, but we won plenty of others.

So what's going on this year?

This season (2017-2018) was an incredibly busy one for me. With The Players, I have directed Disney's Beauty and the Beast (along with Sal), Little Women, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. 

Today, the nominees were finally released, and I was gratified to see that I was nominated for not just one, but two of the shows: Beauty and the Beast (which nomination is shared with Sal) and Little Women. In both cases, it was an incredible cast, and Beauty and the Beast had an incredible orchestra as well. I'm honored to be nominated.

Among the nominees, there are many talented actors, actresses, and technicians who I've worked with over previous years. They are too many to list, but click below to see a complete list.

See the full list of nominees here.

Performers from all three of my shows are being featured during the ceremony, as shown on The Montie Awards Instagram account. Click the name for the appropriate post.

I'm looking forward to attend the awards ceremony next weekend! More news will come as things progress.