IT’S A GOOD NIGHT FOR SINGING – AND SOMETIMES WINNING

 
 
 
 
IT’S A GOOD NIGHT FOR SINGING – AND SOMETIMES WINNING
 
THE annual City of Newcastle Drama Awards night is not just an occasion for honouring the quality of the theatre works staged in the preceding year. It also gives company members and theatregoers the chance to see and enjoy the ever-expanding skills of performers and backstage workers in Newcastle and the Lower Hunter.
 
The 2017 CONDA Awards ceremony, which will be held at the Wests New Lambton Starlight Room on Saturday, December 2, starting at 7pm, will include six very different musical numbers, featuring a total of 55 performers with a wide range of ages. There will be a youth musical number, featuring singers and dancers, aged 9 to 13, established musical participants in a bright and lively work, a classical, long-established song, and a big rock musical piece. The awards staging team are keeping the song titles and performers’ names a secret to surprise and delight the watchers on the night.
 
The Awards ceremony hosts are actors Drew Holmes and Elise Martin with Newcastle-raised musical star Tom Handley as a guest presenter. Handley auditioned for and won a place in the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) music theatre three-year degree course just before doing the HSC examination at Hunter School of the Performing Arts in 2008. Six months before his graduation in 2011, he auditioned for a role in a touring production of the hit musical Wicked and was the only student in his WAAPA year to be selected. He performed in the show for more than two years, with the tour including Australian state capital cities and seasons in Asian and New Zealand cities. He has recently been an ensemble member in an Opera Australia production of My Fair Lady, directed by Julie Andrews, that has had repeat seasons in state capitals.
 
The attractions between the award announcements will also include video interview celebrations of the theatre work of retiring entertainers Lesly Stevenson and Val and Bill Hitchcock.
 
 
 
Lesly Stevenson founded the Dance and Performing Arts Academy (DAPA) in 1988, the first training entity in Newcastle to cover all the performing arts. In 2001, she bought the Roxy Theatre in Hamilton, a venue she had hired on occasions for theatre, dance and singing performances, and renamed it the DAPA Theatre. The theatre’s backstage rooms were used for classes. She was President of CONDA Inc, the organisation which manages the CONDA Awards, for several years, and won two CONDAS – for Best Female Performer in a Musical in 2008, for her role in The Full Monty, and the 2013 Outstanding Achievement Award for her overall theatre involvement. The DAPA Theatre has been bought by WEA Hunter, which plans to rename it as The Creative Arts Space. It will continue to be used for training people and for performances.
 
Val and Bill Hitchcock managed Newcastle’s first and longest running show-and-meal company, Club 71 Dinner Theatre, since 1980, and as they are now in their 80s, decided to close it as virtually all the other people who had assisted in the preparation and serving of meals have retired from their involvement. Club 71 was established in 1971, with the Hitchcocks joining as performers in 1974. They stepped into the roles of running the company when its founders, Ken Mantle and Madge Ormerod, stood down. Bill mainly focused on offstage activities during the Club 71 shows, while Val shared her cooking role with appearing in more than 80 plays for the club and other theatre companies.
 
The awards night will also have a video sequence showing the celebrations of several theatre companies which reached significant milestones in the 2017 theatre year.
 
The videos were put together by CONDA Inc’s major awards night partner, Out of the Square Media.
 
CONDA Awards will be presented in 22 categories, plus an Outstanding Achievement in Theatre Award, with no nominations for that award. The winner will be announced on the night.
 
The strength of the theatre work of Newcastle and Lower Hunter companies is shown by the nominations that were announced on November 9. Thirty-nine shows received a total of 126 nominations, with 25 staging groups represented.
 
The Awards night staging team is drawn from people and organisations involved in Newcastle and Lower Hunter theatre. The production managers are Martin Adnum, the founder and Managing Director of Out of the Square Media, and Rachelle Schmidt Adnum, the founder and Principal of The Voice Studio Newcastle, which trains people in singing and vocal technicalities. She has won three CONDA Awards for her performances. Rachelle is also the Artistic Director of the Awards night. Musical Director Daniel Wilson conducts a 13-member band and put together the musical arrangements for the song-and-dance numbers. James Tolhurst is the Supervising Choreographer. Lifelike Atmospheres is a CONDA event partner, doing the sound and lighting as a sponsorship.
 
Contact Ken Longworth, 4942 2410, for more information