"The envelope, please." Those were the much-awaited words at the annual Cleveland Theater Collective benefit Monday night. For the first time in its five year history, CTC had a panel of area critics vote on seven "Bests" in the past year’s theater season. Awardees ranged from the big Equity houses to the smallest, feistiest local theater companies.
- Best Performance by an Actor: Wayne Turney, Give 'Em Hell, Harry(Actor’s Summit)
- Best Performance by an Actress: Nina Domingue, for colored girls... (Karamu)
- Best Design, Tony Straigies, Scenic Design, Enchanted April (Cleveland Play House)
- Best Touring Production: Big River (Playhouse Square)
- Best Local Production (Musical), Ragtime (JCC)
- Best Local Production (Non-Musical), Hot 'n' Throbbing (convergence-continuum)
- Best Direction, Fred Sternfeld, Ragtime (JCC)

Four Member’s Choice Awards were also given out:
- To Charles Fee and the Great Lakes Theatre Festival staff for reviving Great Lakes Theatre Festival as a repertory company featuring local actors.
- To Seth Gordon for his persistent promotion of new work, both as literary manager (now associate artistic director) of the Cleveland Play House and as a free-lance director.
- To Bad Epitaph Theatre Company for a five-year run of producing challenging classic theater in an urban landscape.
- To Dorothy and Reuben Silver for a lifetime of achievement in Cleveland theatre.

The evening's entertainment included over an hour of excerpts from plays at member theatres: Fully Committed (Beck Center and Actors’ Summit); Stone Cold Dead Serious (TitleWave); 4 Minutes to Happy (CPT); for colored girls...(Karamu); Menopause the Musical (Playhouse Square); Cymbeline (Cleveland Shakespeare Company); Long Days’ Journey into Night (Ensemble); Waiting for Lefty (Charenton); 10 Minutes to Cleveland (Dobama); Guys and Dolls (Porthouse); The Sound of Music (Carousel Dinner Theatre); and Ragtime (JCC). It also included Faye Sholiton’s parodic song about homeless theatre companies ending up at the Play House.

Silent auction items ranged from theater tickets to wine packages to play scripts from the upcoming theater season autographed by playwrights Edward Albee, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Douglas Wright.

Funds from the CTC benefit go to support various theatrical projects throughout the year, such as sign language interpretation for the hearing impaired and extra Equity stipends for small production companies that otherwise couldn’t afford union contracts.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein, Linda@CoolCleveland.com

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