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Tri-State Theater

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Friday, January 15, 2010

Jon's List of Best Shows for 2009

My pal Jon Joy makes my day by sending in his list of the best shows and performances for 2009!

He writes:
I've been reading everyone's "best of" list and I couldn't resist sending my own. I saw 13 shows in Huntington and Charleston (five of which I was involved in) in 2009 and, as always, I was really impressed with the amount of theatre talent in this region. I'm looking forward to upcoming 2010 shows.

Here it is:

Best shows/festivals:

Avenue Q - The Marshall Artist Series presented this touring production in early November. It was a unique, professional and hilarious production.

Into the Woods: This wonderful play really showcased the wide variety of young talent in the area. It was a treat!

The Third Annual New Works Fest at MU: This is a great outlet for new plays and I really enjoyed each one. Clint McElroy's Pep Sturdley was particularly entertaining. There's nothing else like this festival in the area.

Best actor:


Jack Cirillo in A Christmas Carol - It's one of my favorite stories and Jack did an awesome job of bringing all of the characters to life. It was an engaging and entertaining performance.

Best actress(es):

Jane Morse, Loretta Hetzer and Rebecca Payne as Bitsy, Boots and Ida in my First Church Dinner Theatre play. Of course, I am biased on this one, but the three of them cracked me up every night in rehearsal and got huge laughs out of the audience. Their performances were just perfect.

Best Director:

Mary Smirl for Into the Woods. Mary had a great creative vision for the show and united a large cast of young actors in an admirable way. It's not easy to do and she did a great job.

Honorable Mention(s):

First Stage's Charlotte's Web and Alexander were both fantastic and Charleston Stage Company's WV: Words and Music provided an excellent venue for West Virginia writers, actors and musicians. Taking my play Fly by Night to Festiv-all Charleston was also a lot of fun.

There were many others, as well, but these choices represent my fondest memories of the 2009 theatre season. I want to encourage everyone to keep up the good work in 2010! Have fun and support your local theatre.
Great choices, Jon - thanks!

1 comment:

Jon Joy said...

As soon as I sent this, I started thinking about shows/performances that I omitted. I should mention the strong performances and direction of 5th Avenue Theatre Company's production of "Man of La Mancha". I also had the opportunity to see the Marshall Artist Series Spring production of "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" and thoroughly enjoyed it. And finally, I am thankful that the Huntington Museum of Art asked me to direct a production of Samuel Beckett's "Ohio Impromptu" in October. It was part of a night of offbeat, experimental work and very different from most of the plays that I saw or was involved in. I hope we see more theatre at the Museum in the coming years.

Of course, you can't see everything. I've heard rave reviews of "Rent" and "Almost, Maine", two shows that I missed in 2009. And I didn't see a single play in Ashland for the first time in years. Sometimes, it's hard to take in everything when there is so much going on. I'm just glad we have such a wide variety of theatre groups/productions in this area. Keep up the good work, everyone!