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Photo: Tim Norris
The LA Weekly Theater Awards, which began in 1980 to honor work at 99-seat and smaller theaters, will be held no more. The Weekly's advertising director said via email quoted by Stage Raw, the website maintained by ex-Weekly critics, that "our focus for 2015 is utilizing our time and resources towards building, promoting, and evolving events that can bring us profitability for the new year. Unfortunately, this event does not help us towards meeting those directives." Stage Raw's Steven Leigh Morris says it's a surprise, "given the paper's repeated assurance through the year that the Awards would continue -- assurances that kept its jury seeing plays throughout the year for that purpose." He also said the Celebration Theatre had agreed to host the 2015 awards shortly before the email went out. But he noted that both editor Sarah Fenske and publisher Beth Sestanovich had recently departed the LA Weekly.
Morris gives the history:
The first annual L.A. Weekly Theater Awards were held in 1980, after a committee of reviewers had been observing local theater productions through the fledgling newspaper's first year, 1979. It was initially stewarded by Calendar Editor Joie Davidow and taken over in 1985 by Theater Editor Steven Mikulan. The Awards were conceived as anti-awards Awards, honoring and mocking the ritual at the same time. The Awards main attempt was to draw attention to the then-burgeoning small-theater scene, where much of the city's most innovative and engaging (as well as its tackiest) work was being performed. The "Lawees" were a kind of West Coast answer to New York's Obie Awards, which are still sponsored by the Village Voice. Though the LA Weekly and the Voice (the granddaddy of the alt-weekly circuit) were initially entirely separate entities, in a twist-of-fate and mergers, they eventually became owned and administered by the same company -- a descendant of the New Times alt-weekly chain which eventually adopted the moniker, Village Voice Media.
He says, by the way, that since the Weekly's critics kept seeing the plays and all write for Stage Raw, the site is preparing to continue the tradition with its own theater awards. More info to come on that later, Morris writes.
