I admit it. I didn’t really watch the Tonys this year. I decided that cleaning my apartment was more important and for some reason didn’t put it on in the background. I did, however, watch most of it on youtube clips. I don’t really know what to say. That’s not MY Broadway. That isn’t the Broadway that I grew up dreaming about and aspiring to achieve one day. I understand that the producers of the show are trying to get a more diverse audience than just us theater nerds, but does it HAVE to remind me of an MTV awards show? There is a reason I stopped watching MTV. Because it’s crap. Because there is no substance.

Maybe I’m just getting older, or jaded, or my taste is changing, but I don’t think we need to dumb it down that much for America. Every once in a while America surprises us and reminds us that she isn’t that stupid. She can comprehend more then we give her credit for. That’s when great art is made. Truly great art is never following a trend. It always surprises us.

In this day and age with commercial theater becoming more and more like a concert and less and less like theater, I feel grateful for Chicago theater. After watching the performance of Hair last night, I feel grateful for the small production I saw by the now defunct Tonkawa Theater Company. It didn’t have the budget, cast size, or publicity of the production of Hair now performing on Broadway. What it DID have was authenticity, honesty, and simplicity. It was one of the most moving experiences I’ve had in theater and it was in a black box space.

Tonkawa’s production of Hair

In reality, the shows that have moved me the most have been in small storefront non-equity theaters in Chicago…like the Jeff-nominated Evita for example. I’ve seen Evita on a big stage with a big budget a couple of times and it doesn’t hold a candle to the intimate, bare-bones telling that director Fred Anzevino crafted for us this summer. Or going back a few years, the PHENOMENAL production of Mother Courage that the Vitalist Theatre put up which remains one of the best pieces of art I’ve EVER seen.

The ridiculously talented Anne Sheridan Smith in Vitalist Theatre’s Mother Courage.

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely Equity shows I have enjoyed and that have moved me. I also plan to go Equity eventually and the CONS of being a non-equity actor could fill hundreds of blogs. Tonight however, is not about that. The Non-Equity Jeff Awards are about celebrating our non-equity efforts. Tonight is about the actors that work a full-time job and then go straight to rehearsal where they’re getting paid little to nothing. Why do they do this? Because they LOVE it. Tonight is about our love for what we do.

While we may agree or disagree with nominations and results, in the end it doesn’t really matter. This is our night to celebrate each other. Also, while the Non-Equity Jeffs might be low on the totem pole of award shows, we are the future of theater, and the future has never looked brighter. See you at the Jeffs!

I’ll let Chris Jones prove my point:

“The Joseph Jefferson Awards, non-Equity dept., will be handed out tonight at the Park West nighterie.

A very different part of the theatrical food-chain from last night’s Tony Awards? Perhaps.

Don’t look for Liza or Neil Patrick Harris.

But consider this. One of the shows up for tonight’s awards, David Cromer’s The Hypocrites production of “Our Town,” is not only now a huge Off-Broadway hit, but is a candidate for a Broadway transfer. And so, perchance, it could go from one ceremony to the other within twelve swift months.

So there’s one way to look at the Non-Equity Jeffs. The Tonys. A few years earlier.”