CL's 19th Annual Charlotte Theater Awards 

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Minneapolis staffers came here to train the teachers in Children's Theatre of Charlotte's educational programs. They'll be back.

"Our staff came back and was very excited about both the quality of the teachers they worked with there and the whole program," Brosius reports. "Our feeling, of course, is that more is more. So we are thrilled to welcome new professional colleagues to the field because, hopefully, they'll be generating work that we'll want to do, they'll generate education programs that we'll want to replicate. We look forward to all kinds of collaborations between Minneapolis and Charlotte."

Brosius confesses that his company is "partnership crazy," a lesson that remains lost on the Char-Meck Arts & Science Council. When it comes to fostering new performing arts organizations, more is not more to members of that crucial funding organization. Nobody rushed to throw Charlotte Rep a life raft as it was foundering. Nor in the pitiless feeding frenzy that followed did the surviving leaders of the adult theater scene get a noticeably bigger piece of the ASC's largesse.

BareBones Theatre Group, which dominated our comedy category, was homeless at year's end. Actor's Theatre of Charlotte, which had long since eclipsed Rep in relevance and artistic excellence, is still pushed to the fringe at funding time -- though it continued to dominate CL's musical categories for the 2005 year. Combined with Moving Poets Theatre of Dance, now on the verge of extinction due to financial asphyxiation, Actor's and BareBones barely draw one percent of the ASC's funding.

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• Chip Decker
• Craig Spradley is the Best Director (Musical) winner for tick, tick ... BOOM! and he also directed this years Best Comedy winner Johnny Guitar

On the other hand, the ASC has learned a valuable lesson from the Rep fiasco under its new president, Lee Keesler. Heeding CL's analysis rather than the lame death-rattle prattle that issued from Rep's offices, Keesler and the ASC have understood that Rep was cannibalized by its colossally arrogant -- and ignorant -- board of trustees.

"We're now four months into a cultural leadership training program," Keesler told me in December. "We have 30 people in there this first time, and it's people from all over the community, not just from the corporate sector. ... If it works right, we hope we'll have 30 fresh, better-educated, better-oriented board members to offer out into the cultural system when that program is complete in the late spring."

The new nine-month program will yield its first crop of educated board prospects in May. Meanwhile, at Actor's Theatre and Children's Theatre, the lessons of Rep's tragedy have already been learned. Dan Shoemaker, executive director at Actor's, recruits board members exclusively from the company's roster of subscribers.

At Children's Theatre, Poindexter makes sure to lay down the law to his corps of volunteers.

"Once we have them in the door," Poindexter maintains, "if someone thinks they're sitting there to pad their résumé, it's our job to make their journey with the organization clearer. It becomes our responsibility as arts organizations to say, 'Here's what you're really here for. Yes, you're getting credit on your résumé to advance your own personal career, but you're also here to help us. If you're not here to help us, then you shouldn't be here."

Here are CL's 19th Annual Charlotte Theatre Awards:

THEATERPERSONS OF THE YEAR

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• Courtesy Donna Bise
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe brought in awards for Show of the Year, Best Drama, Best Actress (Drama) for Catherine Smith (pictured right), and both Best Costume Design and Set Design for Johann Steigmeir

After playing a key role in configuring the revolutionary ImaginOn, Alan Poindexter made sure the groundbreaking production at Charlotte's new fantasy palace was a smashing success. Bringing the C.S. Lewis classic back to life, Poindexter takes our Theaterperson crown for the third time. More than merely our Show of the Year, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe sustained the wondrous "wow factor" of walking into ImaginOn and justifying the entire enterprise.

Children's Theatre executive director Bruce LaRowe probably said it best when we chatted a couple of months ago:

"Youth theater deserves and requires a technical flexibility that, in many ways, adult theater doesn't because of the myriad locations in the fantasy lands we need to explore in the same piece. Something like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe deserves rear projection ability, and it deserves trappable floors, and it deserves a fly loft so that you're not compromising everywhere you turn. It's really what the literature calls for. So to see Alan and others do the work in a space that's designed for it -- you used the word wonderment, well, that truly is it."

Michael Simmons ascends to the Theaterperson throne for the first time this year, although he's been winning individual acting, directing, designing and even special-effects awards here since 1999. Once again, Simmons was a serious contender for dramatic actor (Orange Lemon Egg Canary), comedy actor (I'm Not Rappaport) and Actor of the Year honors, pulling in additional nominations for directing (Orphans), lighting design (Mrs. Bob Crachit's Wild Christmas Binge) and special effects (Orange Lemon Egg Canary). All of this might be just another ho-hum achievement for Simmons were it not for the fact that it comes after his company, Carolina Actors Studio Theatre, was written off as dead.