TORONTO ALLIANCE FOR the PERFORMING ARTS (TAPA) ANNOUNCES NOMINATIONS FOR 2020 DORA AWARDS
Louis Train, Associate Toronto Critic
On June 8th, 2020, in an online presentation broadcast on YouTube, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts announced the nominations for the 2020 Dora Mavor Moore Awards for the performing arts. The Doras are to Toronto what the Tonys are to New York or the Oliviers to London, although, unlike in New York, where a popular show can run years and producers campaign for Tony wins to boost ticket sales, the Doras mostly recognise shows that have already closed their runs. The Doras are consequently less sensational, less commercial, and, indeed, less stressful for those involved, and in a normal year, the Dora award ceremony, typically held in June, is a chance to celebrate rather than compete.
If this year’s nomination event is any indication, the tone of the 2020 Doras will be decidedly less celebratory in years past. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit everyone hard, but it has absolutely devastated the theatre industry. As Jacoba Knaapen, TAPA’s Executive Director, pointed out Monday morning, theatres were the first businesses to close in March, and will likely be among the last to reopen. Mirvish Theatre has already announced that it won’t be raising its curtains until 2021, and it seems as though the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and Niagara’s Shaw Festival won’t operate at all this year. Resilience was a recurring theme in Monday morning’s announcement; resilience is safer than hope.
Although all in all dozens of shows were nominated across the Dora’s seven divisions, a few obvious favourites swept the nominations. In the musical category, Streetcar Crowsnest’s Ghost Quartet, Mirvish’s Piaf/Dietrich, and Obsidian Theatre/Musical Stage Company’s Caroline, or Change took home the most nominations. Not far behind was Eclipse Theatre’s small-scale immersive production of Sunday in the Park with George. It’s funny to see Sunday in the Park, which ran for just a few days on a tiny budget, compete against a massive undertaking like Caroline, or Change. If Toronto were a bigger city, we might have a category specifically for independent musicals, the same way that straight theatre is divided into independent and general, to give the smaller companies like Eclipse a better chance at taking home a win.
In the general theatre division, Soulpepper Theatre earned the most nominations for its productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Jesus Hopped the A-Train, and Brothers Size and Almighty Voice and his Wife. Credit must be due to Weyni Mengesha, who this summer finishes her first full season as the company’s artistic director.
It wasn’t until the announcements were over that I realised that three of Toronto’s oldest and most important theatre companies, Canadian Stage, Theatre Passe Muraille, and Factory Theatre, had received barely any recognition. Canadian Stage earned four nominations for three different shows, all three co-productions with other companies. Passe Muraille pulled off two nominations for two co-productions, and Factory squeaked away with just one acting nomination. I was especially surprised, and, I’ll admit, a bit disappointed, that Factory Theatre’s Lady Sunrise received no love from the jury, despite being, in my opinion, one of the strongest new shows of the year. Another surprising omission in the new play category was that of Tarragon Theatre’s The Jungle, which last week won the 2020 Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award for Best New Canadian Play.
In the independent theatre division, Coal Mine Theatre took home the most nominations, mainly for its last two completed shows, Between Riverside and Crazy and Marjorie Prime.
Overall, although the 2020 Dora nominations represent a wide range of Toronto’s best theatrical talent, there are a few clear favourites among the jurors who, from what I can tell, play it safe; they prefer classics like A Streetcar Named Desire to more daring, cutting-edge, or obscure productions. There’s nothing wrong with a good Streetcar, but one has to wonder what Toronto’s artistic directors will make of the show's six gleaming nominations. Will they revisit their old, worn copies of Death of a Salesman and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?? And, will they file away those new Canadian plays for another season?