CL's 18th Annual Charlotte Theater Awards 

It never happened.

Meanwhile, the companies with artistic vision and direction weren't moaning "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" while Rep capsized. There was more theatrical activity in Charlotte — at more venues around town — than ever before. To preside credibly over the 18th Annual Charlotte Theater Awards, instituted at the dawn of the Loaf Era at the end of 1987, I was obliged to attend over 70 new productions.

That doesn't include the flock of revivals that hovered over the scene in the summer and fall. On July 8, the fringe theater infiltrated the Uptown at Spirit Square, where rental prices had been prohibitive for a decade. Suddenly there was a funky vibe at 7th Street as the City Stage Fringe Festival brought Epic Arts Repertory, BareBones Theatre Group, and the Chickspeare banditas to Duke Power Playhouse for the first time ever.

More revivals were on the way from Epic Arts and the new king of Charlotte's theater scene, Actor's Theatre. Loud and in-your-face, Hedwig and the Angry Inch took its encore late last summer, with another Actor's Theatre fave from 2003, The Santaland Diaries, home for the holidays. Actor's Theatre also enfolded Epic Arts under its wing, hosting revivals of Halloween at the Poe House and A Mad, Mad Madrigal at its strategically perched site on East Stonewall Street.

With revivals of two scripts that catapulted him to Theaterperson of the Year honors in 2003 — plus the unveiling of Scratchy Scratcherton's Revenge — Epic Arts co-founder Stan Peal stood head-and-shoulders above all other playwrights in town as the most produced. He was also the most honored.

Continuing to reign at Creative Loafing as the creator of The Friar & the Nurse, our Best Original Show of 2003, Peal raked in Best Original Production honors at the first-ever Metrolina Theatre Awards at McGlohon Theatre last September (for A Mad, Mad Madrigal). At last, the leadership of the Metrolina Theatre Association had mobilized its far-flung membership of theater companies, forming panels to judge comedy, drama, musical, college and regional productions.

You think we give a lot of awards? MTA distributed 61 different citations, recognizing work from here to Salisbury.

No wonder things looked so rosy when the limo pulled up to the red-carpeted entrance of Spirit Square for the celebration. City Stage had been a success, MTA had finally gotten its act together, Actor's Theatre had welcomed the city's hottest new company into the hottest new venue, and even the wayward Rep showed promise of sailing out of its doldrums: on August 8, they announced that company founder Steve Umberger would return in February as guest director for Rep's regional premiere of The Exonerated.

From those glowing equinoctial days when the new season was rolling to the launching pad, the sunny outlook headed south. Way south.

In a December to remember, the local scene was buffeted with bad news:

¨ Rep spurns all life rafts. Umberger pulled out of The Exonerated after Rep's clueless board rejected his offer of help for the 2005-06 season. Former managing director Keith Martin, who had previously piloted the company to a surplus, had also offered to return.

¨ Epic Arts takes shore leave. After the revival of Madrigal, Peal's company went on indefinite hiatus, presumably suffering from artistic neurasthenia.

¨ Vance overboard. After 31 seasons as the heart and soul of CP Summer Theatre, the venerable Tom Vance was unceremoniously asked to clean out his office at CPCC.

¨ All hands on deck. A front-page story in the Observer on December 5, "Fringe theaters hanging by threads," read like a sky-is-falling alarm.

It was definitely suspenseful as the clock struck midnight on December 31. Yes, the Rep would soon announce that their month-long run of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change! was their second-highest grossing show ever, eclipsed only by Angels in America. Then eight days before shutting down forever on February 20 (and taking subscribers' money with them), Rep ballyhooed PART (Professional Actor Repertory Training) Acting Classes to begin in March. Their parting fantasy.

But guess what? Vance has already formed a new company, Charlotte Summer Theatre, and will be back in the saddle at Queens University in June. After canceling shows in November and December, Carolina Actors Studio Theatre (CAST) is back in business in their eponymous theater off Central Avenue — with Actor's Gym as their tenant piping in additional programming. CAST will be represented Uptown this summer at the encore edition of the City Stage Fringe Festival.

So will the Off-Tryon Theatre Company, which literally has a new lease on life after moving in with the BareBones Theatre Group at the SouthEnd Performing Arts Center. Both companies reportedly finished 2004 in the black, and SPAC has been filled to the brim for the first two shows I've seen there in 2005.

Rep as we knew it in its heyday — when Graham Smith, Mary Lucy Bivins, Rebecca Koon and Duke Ernsberger were like family — was already gone as 2004 began. Now the flagship company that employed Charlotte's best actors, not to mention the occasional Oscar winner, is altogether, sho 'nuff gone, sunk by a hubristic Rep board of trustees that wrested the helm from qualified theater professionals. The absence of these Equity artists keeps gaping wider, an open wound in our cultural life.

Healing won't happen quickly. But nature does abhor a vacuum, and with so much theater hunger going unsatisfied here in Charlotte, it's inevitable that something will arise to take Rep's place among the nation's major league companies with Actors Equity moorings.

No, it won't happen overnight. But the audience goodwill and the talent pool cultivated over Rep's 29-year run won't vanish, either. The artistic vision that shone so brilliantly while Charlotte's flagship company foundered hasn't been extinguished. There's still plenty of homegrown sunshine all around town — all year round.

Here are CL's 18th Annual Charlotte Theater Awards:

THEATERPERSONS OF THE YEAR You'll always find Chip Decker among the credits in an Actor's Theatre playbill. You just never know where. Over the years, Decker has acted, directed, designed, and even grown a fearsome goatee to join The Angry Inch as their electric bassist in Hedwig. For 2004, Decker took top honors in the comedy director category for Wonder of the World and shared the prize for set design on the strength of his thrusting Fenway concept for Take Me Out. Most of all, he was artistic director at the company that had the most dominating year in the history of the Loaf Awards. He's definitely doing something right.

Whenever something truly exciting was happening on the Charlotte theater scene, chances were better than even that Lon Bumgarner was involved. He brought a reprise of The Friar & the Nurse to Duke Power Playhouse to give the new City Stage festival some Shakespearean weight. Then he stepped to the forefront of another unique theater event, hosting Lifegame at SPAC with a disarming candor that evoked memories of Jack Paar. If that weren't enough, Bumgarner gracefully piloted Take Me Out around the prudishness of the Queen City's homophobes, reminding us that our national pastime mirrors our national hang-ups.

DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR Lon Bumgarner had some strong competition from Decker and Billy Ensley, his stable mates at Actor's Theatre. But even without his Peal reprise, Bumgarner broke into the lead by bridging the widest range of material, the go-for-the-jugular satire of Betty's Summer Vacation and the taut suspense of Lobby Hero. He dashed to the winner's circle with a championship job on Take Me Out. Like many directors, Bumgarner prefers to mold actors he's familiar with into new roles. In Take Me Out, he was obliged to take a cast of mixed ethnicities, some inexperienced and others new to Charlotte, and mold them into an ensemble. From manager down to scrub, the New York Empires came out smelling like a team.

ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Nobody did more than Nicia Carla to get the City Stage Fringe Festival off to a rousing start, reprising her comic turn in Melissa James Gibson's [sic]. But Carla had to add to her impressive gallery to regain the crown she first won in 2002. Her two outings in classic roles at Children's Theatre cemented the title, Miss Clavel in Madeline and the Witch in Hansel & Gretel. There was a nicely gauged streak of kindness amid Miss C's overriding starchiness that was sacramentally spot-on with a whisper of humor. Better yet, there was fiendish delight in the jowly Witch's cannibalistic compulsion. You win, my pretty!

ACTOR OF THE YEAR Returning to the throne he won back in 1993, Brian Robinson becomes the first actor to win this award twice. In a year when most of our indigenous Equity artists were no-shows, Robinson managed to distinguish himself at three different companies — across the full spectrum of comedy, musical and drama. Robinson was pure white bread as the romantic lead in Rep's revival of Barefoot in the Park even if it was an excruciatingly tame choice of repertoire. Given a go at edgier roles, he feasted and triumphed. You couldn't miss the fun Robinson was having onstage as Hold-Your-Nose Billy in Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy. But I'm still in awe of his work in Take Me Out as the personable, literate and troubled shortstop, Kippy Sundstrom. Every facet of the team captain was beautifully rendered and proportioned.

SHOW OF THE YEAR Confounding the denunciations of Christian wackos who couldn't be bothered with the script, Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out was one of the most wholesome and reverential dramas to come along in years. Everything was so beautifully counterpoised in this smart Actor's Theatre production, comedy and tragedy, reverence for the aesthetic splendor of the game and the everyday earthiness of the dugout, and most of all, the democracy of the diamond and the racism and bigotry that still haunt the game. The show offered a microcosm of the republic played out in the wake of a superstar's heretical revelation that he's gay. The self-conscious shower scene, chastely shielded from our corruptible eyes, was actually compared to the biblical expulsion from Eden! A victory for art over ignorance.

COMPANY OF THE YEAR Actor's Theatre of Charlotte has moved to the vanguard of the local scene by tackling the edgy materials that were locked out of Charlotte Rep's buttoned-down boardroom. If Bat Boy, Wonder of the World, and Take Me Out came short of the technical polish of Rep at its best, the warm intimacy of the Actor's Theatre stage and the sheer joyous adventurousness that goes into every production more than cover the slack. Was anybody who knows theater truly looking forward to Rep's God's Man in Texas with the same enthusiasm that we can still hold onto for ATC's Tick, Tick...Boom! and The Tale of the Allergist's Wife? Let them redeem their worthless Rep tickets for freebies at East Stonewall and become believers.

MUSICALS

Best Musical: Bat Boy: The Musical — Actor's Theatre of Charlotte

Best Actress: Lisa Smith — Cabaret (Sally Bowles)

Best Actor: Bob Walker — Bat Boy: The Musical (Bat Boy)

Best Director: Billy Ensley — Bat Boy: The Musical

Best Conductor/Music Director: John Coffey — Cabaret

Best Choreographer: Billy Ensley — Bat Boy: The Musical

Best Supporting Actress: Holly Riley — Anything Goes (Erma)

Best Supporting Actor: Patrick Ratchford — Bat Boy: The Musical (Sheriff/Pan)

Best Cameo Appearance, Female: Jill Bloede — Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy (Captain Nips)

Best Cameo Appearance, Male: Corey Mitchell — Bat Boy: The Musical (Rev. Hightower)

COMEDIES

Best Comedy: Wonder of the World — Actor's Theatre of Charlotte

Best Actress: Cat Zeggert — Wonder of the World (Cass)

Best Actor: Lee Thomas — Wonder of the World (Kip)

Best Director: Chip Decker — Wonder of the World

Best Supporting Actress: Donna Scott — Bright Ideas (Denise, etc.)

Best Supporting Actor: Michael Nester — Wonder of the World (Captain Mike)

DRAMAS

Best Drama: Take Me Out — Actor's Theatre of Charlotte

Best Actress: Christy K. Basa — Our Country's Good (Liz Morden/Lt. Will Dawes)

Best Actor: Brian Robinson — Take Me Out (Kippy Sunderstrom)

Best Director: Lon Bumgarner — Take Me Out

Best Supporting Actress: Nicia Carla — Hansel & Gretel (The Witch)

Best Supporting Actor: Michael R. Simmons — Glengarry Glen Ross (Dave Moss)

THEATERCRAFTS

Best Lighting Designer: Eric Winkenwerder — Oedipus Rex

Best Set Designer: Chip Decker — Take Me Out; Jim Gloster — Over the River and Through the Woods

Best Sound Designer: Dean Kluesner/Michael Eld — The Faculty Room

Best Special Effects: Michael Simmons — Bat Boy: The Musical (Make-Up)

Best Costume Designer: Johann Stegmeir — Oedipus Rex

BEST ORIGINAL SHOW 1963 by Judy Simpson Cook

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR Brett Gentile — Lobby Hero (Bill), Betty's Summer Vacation (Keith), Bright Ideas (Ross, Coach Angus, etc.)

THEATER EVENT OF THE YEAR City Stage Fringe Festival @ Spirit Square — Anne Lambert/NCBPAC

SWEET 16 FOR 2004

1. Take Me Out — Actor's Theatre of Charlotte

2. Wonder of the World — Actor's Theatre of Charlotte

3. Bat Boy: The Musical — Actor's Theatre of Charlotte

4. The Last Five Years — CPCC Summer Theatre

5. Lifegame — BareBones Theatre Group/Matt Olin

6. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie — Children's Theatre of Charlotte

7. Mud — The Farm Theatre

8. Cabaret — Theatre Charlotte

9. Play About the Baby — BareBones Theatre Group

10. Pageant — Off-Tryon Theatre Company

11. Lobby Hero — Actor's Theatre of Charlotte

12. Lonely Planet — BareBones Theatre Group

13. Oedipus Rex — Children's Theatre

14. Over the River and Through the Woods — Charlotte Repertory Theatre

15. Laughing Wild — Carolina Actors Studio Theatre

16. Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy — Children's Theatre

DA BOMBS

1. Alice Neel — Willoughby Avenue Productions

2. Nuncrackers — CPCC Theatre

3. A Tree With Arms — Allyn Points/CAST

4. Macbeth — Actor's Gym

5. Charlotte Squawks — WTVI