Beginning today, look to DC Theatre Scene for a new series of articles all about this past season’s shows, featuring many of DC’s most well-loved theatre artists. The series, called Helen Hayes Awards 2012, will run throughout the next two weeks leading up to the night of the awards on Monday, April 23rd.
We start today with Will Gartshore on the Supporting Actor in a Musical category.
Since the ceremony first began in 1985, The Helen Hayes Awards have grown to become DC’s most prestigious recognition of both resident and out-of-town achievements in performance, design, and direction at theatres large and small. In past years, DC Theatre Scene has spoken directly with the nominees in each category. This year, we’re approaching our coverage a little differently. We have spoken with some of the city’s most recognizable arts figures — including playwrights, directors, designers, and actors — who will each cover a specific awards category.
In compiling some larger observations about the current state of the arts, our goal is to get a snapshot of DC theatre in 2012. We are looking to use this wider variety of responses series to enrich our thinking, and raise new topics and questions, as we move into the awards themselves.
Some of our guests share specific thoughts about the nominees in a given category, and we invited thoughts from them on other aspects of DC theatre as well. That opened up a rich vein of conversation. They’ve talked about recent trends, the overall atmosphere of art-making, observations on the national climate, evidence of exciting new projects to come, and much more. They have also been invited to comment on what it is about theatre that is most important to them, as well as the type of work they would like to see more of in upcoming seasons.
We hope you’ll join us for this expanded discussion of the 2012 Helen Hayes Awards. If you have observations of your own, or thoughts on this year’s nominees, we encourage you to use the Comments feature on any Helen Hayes Awards 2012 series article, or on our compilation page, Curtain Call, to share with us and add to the larger conversation.
And, at the end of each article, we invite you get in on the guessing game of who will actually take home the coveted awards.
