With a mission to “celebrate the past season on the eve of the new,” Calgary’s theatre companies, performers, and crews are getting ready to walk the stage for one last time in 2023-24.
The 2024 Bettys, the Betty Mitchell Awards, recognize the top performances by professional theatre companies in the city.
This year, Theatre Calgary (TC) has taken over a third of the nominations for awards, with 34 out of 89 awards nominated for productions held by TC, and for cast and crew in TC plays and musicals—including a record 13 for A Christmas Carol.
“It feels a little embarrassing on one level, but then on another level, it’s just wonderful to be able to experience that kind of acknowledgment for all the amazing work that’s happened over our last season,” said Stafford Arima, Artistic Director for Theatre Calgary.
“The most important aspect is… the artists. The acknowledgement of the work that is being brought to the Theatre Calgary stage, in so many departments. Whether that’s the performance department, or projections, or video, or sets, or costumes. It’s a testament to the talent, number one, that exists here in Calgary and in Canada.”
The return of A Christmas Carol for Theatre Calgary’s 2023-24 season also garnered the long-running production a first-ever nomination for outstanding production of a play.
It’s a nomination garnered alongside another TC production in conjunction with Alberta Theatre Projects, Made in Italy.
“You know that that’s an incredible honour and recognition of a very long-standing tradition that Theatre Calgary has had,” said Arima.
“We, as producers, really our main goal is to bring that work to the stage and to share it with an audience. So I’m very, very proud and feel, again, very honoured by the the the amount of nominations that we did get this year.”
He said that the number of nominations for productions that the company has had with Alberta Theatre Projects, and for the other nominees being between multiple theatre companies in the city, was a reflection of the universality of theatre.
“Actually what’s interesting is both Selma Burke and Beaches are examples of two new works. Selma Burke made its world premiere on the Martha Cohen Stage as part of our collaboration with ATP, and Beaches is also a brand new script and creative team that has brought a brand new production, an original new production, to the Max Bell Stage,” Arima said.
“You can look at something like Beaches, where you have a Broadway team. Or, you then can look at something like a Selma Burke, where you have local writers and an out-of-town director. To me, there’s something borderless about all of that… it brings me a lot of pride that we put on our stage artists from around the world. Global recognition of artists as nearby as Inglewood to as far as New York, or in some cases, London, England.”
Smaller companies get big recognition with the Bettys
Bronwyn Steinberg, Artistic Director for Lunchbox Theatre, which operates out of Vertigo Theatre at the base of the Calgary Tower, said that she was proud of their work to garner 13 awards this year for their four productions.
“I always go back and forth on awards. We just want to do good work, and if people think it’s award-worthy, it’s good for them. But you know, it does feel nice. The Bettys are juried by our peers, and it’s a whole committee and people from the theatre industry, and a whole bunch of different people are part of that committee. So it’s nice to have that recognition and know that that the community thinks highly of our work,” Steinberg said.
“We’re small, we only did four shows, and our shows are on a smaller scale certainly than some of the other companies. So it’s hard to compete in some ways with a really big spectacle, so for our work to be considered award-worthy is really special.”
Steinberg herself was nominated for her work in directing The Dark Lady for Lunchbox Theatre and The Shakespeare Company.
“One of the things that I’m most proud of for the season is we only had seven actors on our stage this year, because we had four small shows, and all seven of them were nominated for their performances, which is kind of amazing. Like, 100 per cent of our actors got nominations,” she said.
“What it makes me really excited and proud to think of our work here is that it’s that hopefully it means that lunchbox is a place where actors can really thrive, and feel supported to be able to do their best work. And that the stories that we’re programming are stories where they can really show off what they can do.”
The Bettys Awards are nominated by a committee of 12 anonymous theatre professionals. To be nominated for an award, a production has to run in Calgary for at least nine performances over two weeks, by one of Calgary’s professional theatre or opera companies.
The awards will be presented on June 24 at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. Tickets are available at www.bettymitchellawards.com.
