The Tony Awards may be the biggest celebration of theatre but Katie Lewis-Prieur would rather be at the tenth annual Cappies Gala. High school theatre aficionados will gather at the NAC on June 7 to mark the end of another Cappies season.
“ I will standby saying ours is a way more exciting show,” laughs Lewis-Prieur. This is her third year as the Canada’s Capital Cappies program director. “The energy in the room … is just pulsing and I don’t think the Tonys have anything on us.”
The Critics and Awards Program, better known as Cappies, was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1999 to give high school arts students a chance in the limelight. The program is made up of two components: the high school productions and the critic teams who review the shows.
The best reviews are then published in the city’s local paper, in this case, the Ottawa Citizen. At the end of the year the critics vote on the shows they saw. Students have the chance to win awards for all production elements including Best Lighting, Best Lead Actor or Actress, and of course, Best Play or Musical.
“It’s amazing to see how this has taken hold of the city and raised the performing arts to something that is valued by the high school culture,” Lewis-Prieur says. “People are rooting for these students who perhaps they weren’t rooting for ten years ago.” When Cappies came to Ottawa in 2005 15 schools took part in the program. This year’s roster boasts 38 participants.
Lewis-Prieur says she anticipates this gala to be the program’s biggest yet. She and the rest of the volunteer-run Cappies planning committee have been meeting to coordinate the tenth celebration.
Many participants have gone on to careers in the arts. Former St. Mark Catholic High School student Stephanie La Rochelle was runner-up on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s televised hunt for a new ruby slipper wearing Dorothy on CBC’s Over the Rainbow. She guest-starred on an episode of Canadian favourite Heartland, a show chronicling a family-run cattle ranch in the Alberta Rockies, in February.
“Being able to get onto the NAC stage is crazy,” says La Rochelle. “To say that I’ve stood on the NAC stage is pretty cool and to get to actually perform on that stage is even cooler.” La Rochelle sang on the Southam Hall stage as a Cappies Chorus member and was invited back as a special guest in 2013.
Shows nominated for Best Play or Musical perform a condensed scene at the NAC. Aspiring singers have the chance to audition for the Cappies Chorus, a group of students who get to start and end the show with parodies of Broadway tunes.
Like La Rochelle, Delaney Gilmore of Glebe Collegiate Institute says she has enjoyed her experiences with Cappies both as a critic and an actor.
“It gave me a better opportunity to get a lot more experience in the arts … it’s not easy always to find in the school board so it was great to have a program where I could really express my interests.” Gilmore, a grade 12 student, appeared in her school’s production of The Enchanted, an ethereal play about curiosity, last year.
Cappies will finish the season in early May after a slew of shows including Glebe Collegiate’s production and Immaculata High School’s performance of The Giver, the stage adaptation of Lois Lowry’s popular dystopian teen novel. Lewis-Prieur, who will try to see as many of the year’s line-up as she can, says she looks forward to watching the teens shine onstage or behind-the-scenes.
“I see students at each of the shows who have never crossed the boards before, are now out there and are taking healthy risks and I think it’s a life-changer for a lot of people.”