“If this isn’t wonderland, I don’t know what is,” Gretchen Shope said through tears, accepting the Jimmy Award for Best Actress.
She stood on the Minkskoff Theater’s stage, making her Broadway debut. Named for prolific theater owner and producer James M. Nederlander, the Jimmy Awards recognize excellence in high school musical theater.
What are the Jimmy Awards?
Every year, teenage nominees are chosen from dozens of theater awards programs throughout the United States to compete at the Jimmy Awards. The nominees spend the week before the show preparing a sequence of medley performances of various characters from musicals. Attendees have the opportunity to work with and learn from Jimmy alumni and other Broadway actors and personnel.
A group of judges chooses eight finalists from those nominees to perform solos during the second act of the show. From those eight finalists, two performers win the Best Actor and Best Actress Jimmy Awards. While the Jimmys award all finalists $5,000 — in addition to giving a few other awards — Best Actor and Best Actress win $25,000.
As Josh Groban, host of the 15th annual award show, called them, all “102 ridiculously talented nominees” performed during Act I of the show. This year, Act I included songs from Mean Girls, Urinetown, Les Misérables, Shrek the Musical, The Addams Family Musical, Little Shop of Horrors, West Side Story, Oklahoma!, The Drowsy Chaperone, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
In Act II, finalists Damson Chola Jr., performing “Make Them Hear You” from Ragtime, and Shope, performing “The Music That Makes Me Dance” from Funny Girl, wowed the judges in their respective performances, winning the Best Actor and Actress Awards.
The six other finalists included James Thibault, performing “Tonight at Eight” from She Loves Me; Fabiola Caraballo Quijada, performing “I’m Here” from The Color Purple; Catherine Dosier, performing “Almost Real” from The Bridges of Madison County; Luke Martin, performing “At the Fountain” from Sweet Smell of Success; Samia Hosadas, performing “I’d Give My Life For You” from Miss Saigon; and Peter Dessert, performing “I Love Betsy” from Honeymoon in Vegas. Each performer brought a strong voice and their own personality to their showcase.
The Jimmy Awards are some of the most prestigious high school musical theater awards, referred to as “the Tonys, for teenagers.” Just as the Tony Awards showcase the star power of Broadway performers, so too do the Jimmys — but for performers who are fresh out of high school, coming off of a fantastic theater season while juggling the perils of teenagehood and taking SATs.
Highlighting the Excellence of Arts Education
The June 24 ceremony recognized excellence in musical theater, extolling the audience on the importance of theater and arts education. Groban, fresh from a Broadway run of Sweeney Todd, made this clear throughout the program.
“Arts education isn’t just where I learned to be a better performer,” Groban said. “It’s where I learned to be a better person.”
He continued to explain the positive impacts of theater education on himself and other “theater kids,” including that low-income students who are involved in theater are more likely to graduate from college.
“It’s not just good for the arts, it’s good for the world.”
It’s not just good for the arts, it’s good for the world.
Josh Groban
Others echoed what Groban had to say. “If we need any indication of the beautiful future for our industry, it’s with all of you,” said Kristin Caskey, chair of the board of the Broadway League, one of the Jimmys’ sponsors.
The Jimmy alumni are the perfect indication that this is true; over 60 Jimmy alumni have starred in Broadway tours and national and international tours. Some of the alumni include Andrew Barth Feldman, who played Evan in Dear Evan Hansen, and Casey Likes, currently originating the role of Marty McFly in Back to the Future: The Musical.
Entertainment reporter and host of the intermission show, Joelle Garguilo spoke with 2023’s winners, Langston Lee and Lauren Marchand during the program. They both agreed that joining the network of Jimmy alumni is a great support in and of itself.
“Keep working,” Likes advised the 2024 nominees and those watching. “Bring yourself joy by doing it.”
“Theater is art that you cannot make by yourself,” said Telly Leung, one of the 2024 coaches to the performers during the week before the show. “Theater is an art that you make with other people. Don’t forget to be a great human … that’ll make your art better.”
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