Festival & Gala

2019/2020 Festival
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ACT-CO Festival and Gala Update

Your ACT-CO Board recognizes that running a Festival is not what many of the groups need or want at this time.  For this reason, the ACT-CO Festival will remain on hiatus until the 2023-2024 season. 

ACT-CO will focus on ensuring that the Festival meets your needs, and will be reaching out to you for your ideas on the ways in which the Festival may be improved.  Ensuring that we have top-notch adjudicators is of paramount importance to everyone, so rebuilding a Talent Bank is a priorioty.

We will also ensure that the Gala meets your needs.  We all  look forward to celebrating our successes, and it may be time to switch it up.  

If participating on the Festival Committee or Gala Committee is of interest to you, please send an email to president@actco.ca.

 

 

 
The Oakville Players Shorts Festival

The Oakville Players Shorts Festival

We are excited to announce our plans to host our first event since the lockdown first began in March 2020!  Having been away for so long, we couldn't think of a better way to take the stage again than to mount our One-Act Festival, designed to provide you with a opportunity to showcase your work in front of a live audience.

Traditionally, we put out calls for scripts and follow up with a search for directors.  This time around, we're also opening up submissions to other forms of entertainment.  If you have an act (eg. comedian, improv, magician, juggler, etc) then we invite you to apply too!

We are also encouraging you to team up with your friends, colleagues or other theatre lovers to join you.  Don't worry, we will also help to round up volunteers to participate in the event.

So if you're an up and coming (or seasoned) playwright, director or performer, take the plunge and apply for your chance to be in our Comeback Festival,  If heping out backstage is more your cup of tea, let us know - we welcome you too!

In addition to inviting an in-person audience, we are also going to live stream the event to the delight of those who prefer to enjoy the evening from home.  

For further information, go to www.oakvilleplayers.ca 

Alex Ragozzino - President, The Oakville Playersd

 
 
About Festival
ACT-CO is the Association of Community Theatres-Central Ontario. We are a not-for-profit umbrella organization for 33 theatre groups. Our region stretches from Oakville in the West, Bowmanville in the East, Muskoka in the North, and Lake Ontario in the South.

Our main focus is education, but we also provide various services to our member groups including input into Community Theatre at the provincial level through our membership in Theatre Ontario. We provide workshops in various aspects of theatre such as set design, producing, audition techniques, etc.

Our most visible educational activity however, is our Festival. Our festival usually has 40 to 45 productions entered as a Musical, a Drama or a Comedy. Each production entered in the festival receives an adjudication by a working theatre professional. The adjudicators attend one performance of each show in their category. Following the performance they will spend approximately twenty minutes with the general audience in a public adjudication to give a high level overview of the production and some of their observations and highlights. The adjudicator will then have an in-depth dialogue with the members of the production and the company about the performance they just viewed. This is meant to give the group ideas and suggestions on ways to move their performances forward, and continue producing top-notch theatre for both theirs and their audience's benefit.

The festival culminates each year in April at our Annual THEA Awards Gala when the adjudicators** are asked to select nominations and winners in a number of categories to recognize outstanding performances and achievements from the season. These awards, called THEAs, are presented at the Gala. A further job of our adjudicators is to select what they consider to be the best production of our Festival. The group selected will represent the ACT-CO region at the annual Theatre Ontario Festival in May.

** Neither the ACT-CO Festival Chair nor the ACT-CO Board of Directors are involved in the selection of nominations or winners. Adjudicators are hired for their theatre knowledge and expertise: the decision is theirs and theirs alone. The Adjudicators make their own decision regarding nominees and winners in their respective category. The Adjudicators then debate the merits of the best production in each category, and reach consensus in the order in which the productions will be approached to represent the region. The ACT-CO Festival Chair is present for the discussion but does not provide input.
 
ACT-CO Theatre Ontario Festival Entries
Each year, the ACT-CO Adjudicators, select a Best Production in each of the Comedy, Drama, and Musical categories. They then choose one of these to be ACT-CO's entry in the Theatre Ontario Festival. If none of the three Best Productions choose to take their show to the TO Festival, the Adjudicators, at their descretion, choose an alternate.

Click here for the chart of past TO Festival entries..
 
History of the THEA award

At the Fourth Annual Theatre Arts Ball ("The Gala") on April 12, 1980 (at the Grand Ballroom of The Sheraton Centre in Toronto) the THEA award statuette was débuted. The THEA was designed by Michael Beatovich and was cast in aluminum by Dominion Regalia in Toronto (and has been cast and produced by them ever since).
Until the 2011/2012 Season, ACT-CO awarded 44 THEA's every year at the Gala. Beginning with the 2012/2013 Season, a Stage Management THEA was added, and an additional THEA was added to the Best Producton (one statue for the Group, and one for the Producer) in each of the three categories, bringing the total to 50.

Our cost to cast and produce each THEA:
1980: $15.00
1991: $32.20
2000: $47.00
2006: $51.47
2011: $65.82
2015: $78.93
The rising cost of each THEA is absorbed in the cost of producing the Festival and contributes to the fee charged for each adjudication.

We have no record of how much the original mold cost, but it is now showing quite a bit of wear (having been used to cast over 1990 THEA statuettes) and will have to be replaced sometime soon.
  THEAs are awarded for Best in the following way:  
      Comedy Drama Musical  
  * Production xx xx xx  
  Director x x x  
  Musical Director     x  
  Choreographer     x  
  Stage Manager x x x  
  Set Designer x x x  
  Lighting Designer x x x  
  Sound Designer x x x  
  Costume Designer x x x  
           
  Actor - Leading x x x  
  Actor - Supporting x x x  
  Actress - Leading x x x  
  Actress - Supporting x x x  
           
  Adjudicator Awards xxxx xxxx xxxx  
             
  Awards Categories: 14   THEAs Awarded: 50  
     
  * For Best Production, one THEA is awarded to the Group, and one THEA is awarded to the Producer(s).

When more than one, but less than five, persons are NAMED as the award winners, up to three additional THEAs may be purchased by the Group. Click here for the rules.

[ Information correct as at July 2017 ]