Cabaret and Taming of the Shrew dominate 22nd CAT Awards with six wins each

Calgary's community theatre scene celebrated its year Saturday at the 22nd CAT Awards, held at MacEwan Hall with provincial NDP leader Naheed Nenshi as guest host. The awards honoured 52 productions from 21 different community theatre companies.

The musical Cabaret from Front Row Centre Players and an inverted-gender version of The Taming of the Shrew from Full Circle Productions each took home six awards, tying for the night's top honours.

Cabaret won outstanding production of a musical and recognized Tanis Laatsch for her lead performance as Sally Bowles, Danielle Desmarais for choreography, Kay Astop for direction, and Chelsea Wellman and Alexander L. Shawn for musical direction.

Full Circle's gender-swapping Taming of the Shrew won outstanding production of a play plus CATs for Cayley Wreggit's direction, Tawni Marie Evans' costume designs, Rebecca Orion's lighting designs, Ian Pond's fight direction and an ensemble award.

Anne Hodgson and Stephanie Bessala each received a CAT for outstanding lead performance in a play — Hodgson for playing Abby Brewster in Workshop Theatre's Arsenic and Old Lace, and Bessala for playing Jo March in Morpheus Theatre's Little Women.

In supporting roles, Parker Knibb won for his performance as Freddy Benson in Front Row Centre Player's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, while Alex Hiatt and Matt McPhail won for their supporting performances in the same production. Ben Gaudet won for his role as Luc in Full Circle's Power Play, and Nolan Peters won for playing Laurie in Little Women.

Erin Weir and Megan Baldrey received the CAT for their original script for Full Circle's Power Play.

Janos Zeller was this year's recipient of the Sandy Singer Award for Outstanding Contribution to Community Theatre. Zeller was recognized for his years of service as a producer, director, designer, mentor, actor and educator with several different theatre companies.

A full list of winners is available at awards@calgary-acts.com.