Former Artistic Director, others honoured with Dora Mavor Moore Awards
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
Recently, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts handed out Dora Mavor Moore Awards for the 43rd time, honouring the best in Toronto theatre over the course of the previous year. Several artists honoured that night may have names familiar to audiences of the Blyth Festival.
Eric Coates, the long-time artistic director for the Blyth Festival, was honoured in the Theatre for Young Audiences category, winning Best Direction for Bentboy at the Young People’s Theatre.
The play was also nominated in the Theatre for Young Audiences category for Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Play and twice for Outstanding Performance by an Individual (Dillan Meighan-Chiblow and Dylan Thomas Bouchier).
In the General Theatre category, Dan Mousseau won the Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role for his work in PRODIGAL, produced by The Howland Company and Crow’s Theatre. The Howland Company is a Toronto-based theatre that was co-founded by Huron County native Cam Laurie, his wife Hallie Seline (who are both in The Donnellys: A Trilogy this season), among others.
Philip Akin, who directed The Wilberforce Hotel at the Blyth Festival in 2015, was nominated for Outstanding Direction for Maanomaa, My Brother, produced by Blue Bird Theatre Collective and Canadian Stage.
Ronnie Burkett, who notably brought Edna Rural’s Church Supper to the Festival’s Phillips Studio in 2015, won Outstanding Costume Design for Little Dickens, produced by Canadian Stage and Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes.
Deanna H. Choi, who has previously worked at the Blyth Festival, recently in sound design and composition for Jumbo in 2019, was part of a trio - alongside Maddie Bautista and Erin Brubacher - that wrote Love You Wrong Time for Bad Muse Collective and Nightwood Theatre, which was nominated for both Outstanding Production and Outstanding New Play in the Independent Theatre category.
Choi and Bautista would go on to win the Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble and Outstanding Sound Design and Composition Dora Awards for Love You Wrong Time in the Independent Theatre category.
PJ Prudat, who was one of the two actors to perform in the Blyth Festival’s 2021 production of Café Daughter on the Harvest Stage, was also nominated in the Best Performance by an Ensemble category as part of the cast of Niizh, produced by Native Earth Performing Arts. Prudat was also nominated in the Theatre for Young Audiences category for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in Bentboy.
Haley McGee, who has acted on the Blyth Festival stage in 2011’s Early August, 2012’s Having Hope at Home and The Lonely Diner: Al Capone in Euphemia Township, won the Outstanding Performance by an Individual Dora Award for her starring role in The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale, which she also wrote, produced by Never Mind the Noise, Soulpepper, Outside the March and red light district. McGee’s play was also nominated in both the Independent Theatre’s Outstanding Production and Outstanding New Play categories and its director, Mitchell Cushman, was also nominated for Outstanding Direction.
Michelle Ramsay, who worked on the lighting design for Ipperwash at the Blyth Festival in 2017, was nominated in the Independent Theatre category for Outstanding Lighting Design for her work on MARTYR, produced by ARC.
In the Musical Theatre category, Alice in Wonderland, produced by Bad Hats Theatre and Soulpepper Theatre won Dora Awards for Outstanding Production and Outstanding New Musical.
Fiona Sauder, who worked in Blyth as part of the group that put together The Fighting 61st under theatre legend Paul Thompson, wrote the book for the show. She shared the awards with Landon Doak and Victor Pokinko, who wrote the music, and Matt Pilipiak, who served as the dramaturg.
Sue Miner, with Pilipiak and Sauder as associate directors, won the Dora Award for Outstanding Direction for Alice in Wonderland as well.
Tess Benger won the Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role for Alice in Wonderland. Vanessa Sears, from the same show, was also nominated in the category, while Sauder, Doak, Pilipiak and Breton Lalama were all nominated in the Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role category, but lost to Hailey Gillis in The Shape of Home.
The play would also win Dora Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Design (Ming Wong, costume design) and Outstanding Original Choreography (Cameron Carver).