CL's 18th Annual Charlotte Theater Awards 

Page 2 of 4

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.