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Gregory Award

The evening of 25th October marked the second-annual Gregory Award ceremony in Seattle. The award ceremony was created by the Theatre Puget Sound organization and the awards are based on nominations by the public at large and a nominating committee of theater critics and academics. Actors' Equity supported the ceremony this year as a sponsor. The final awards are voted on by members of Theatre Puget Sound, a consortium of 140 theaters and 1,700 individual stage artists in the Puget Sound region. The event was an opportunity for Washington state theatre artists to honor their community and was hosted this year by ACT Theatre. Theatre artists, union affiliated or otherwise, received recognition for a year’s worth of admirable work. Some Seattle artists receiving Gregory Award recognition this year included actors Hans Altwies and Marya Sea Kaminski; designers Andrew D. Smith (lighting), Melanie Burgess (costumes), Andrea Bryn Bush (scenery), RJ Tancioro (music & sound), and Steven Dietz (playwriting). Also receiving recognition were Book-It Repertory Theatre for their outstanding production of Cider House Rules pt.1 and ACT Theatre as “theatre of the year.”

The dignified award’s gala also paid tribute to decades-long theatre professional and Empty Space Theatre founding artistic director M. Burke Walker, who was awarded the Gregory A. Falls Sustained Achievement Award. (It is named, as are the other Gregory awards, in honor of the late ACT Theatre founder and UW drama professor Greg Falls.) Walker headed the former Empty Space from 1970-1990 and is widely credited with helping to jumpstart the Seattle theater scene, and put it on the national theater map with his productions of works by Beckett, Pinter, and Shepard, as well as workshopping and embracing new American plays. Walker is currently a freelance director in New York.

Here are some of the Equity nominees for Seattle's Gregory Awards, which was produced by Theatre Puget Sound and partially sponsored by AEA. Top Row, left to right, Marianne Owen, Kurt Beattie, Hans Altwies. Bottom Row, L to R, Jane Jones, Greg Carter, Anne Allgood, Charles Leggett.