— पांच हजार छह सौ निन्यानबे —
It's kind of amazing the degree to which Shobhit has become in local arts events lately—all because he is on two different boards:
SAG-AFTRA Seattle Local and
Theater Puget Sound. And this is resulting in my participation in more of these things than usual as well, as his companion.
The two Tasveer South Asian Film Festival film screenings I attended last week were because of Shobhit's involvement, getting local SAG-AFTRA to sponsor the event (for chump change, but they sponsored it; Shobhit is hoping to leveral the success for better sponsorship next year). And last night—all of two nights after the second Tasveer film screening—I accompanied Shobhit to the
2024 Gregory Awards, something I did not even know existed.
They started in 1998 as an annual "Gregory A. Falls Sustained Achievement Award," but as of 2009 added six more categories to become the early version of the "Gregory Awards" that exist today: a regional, Puget Sound celebration of excellence in live theater. Basically, a local kind of Tony Awards event.
This year's ceremony was the first in-person event since 2019, and I believe they also added several new categories this year. They had QR codes posted around the Center Theater lobby at Seattle Center where the event took place, which took us to the
digital program: the fourth page ("ACT I") lists the 13 categories for which awards were given inside the theater. On the fifth page ("ACT II") are an additional 13 categories, and these ones were announced on screens, both inside the theater and in the lobby, after the in-theater ceremony while people returned to the lobby to schmooze. Shobhit and I wound up wandering back into the theater to watch the screen announcements from the very same seats we had been sitting in previously (second row, center section, near the aisle toward stage left), because it was much easier to see from in there. Several others came in after us to do the same.
— पांच हजार छह सौ निन्यानबे —
— पांच हजार छह सौ निन्यानबे —
Anyway, I left work 10 minutes early so I could walk to the Monorail, transfer to Light Rail, walk home from Capitol Hill Station, and get home by about 5:00. Shobhit was also volunteering for TPS—he went down there for a few hours on Sunday to help set things up—so he wanted to get there early in case any help was needed for anything.
We caught the #8 bus from 15th and John at 5:35, and must have gotten to Center Theater (which is in the basement level of the Armory building at Seattle Center) at about 6:00. The ceremony was scheduled from 7 to 10 p.m.
Several platters of snacks had been brought in, it kind of looked like from Costco. They were things like tortilla wraps, cheese cubes, grapes, and salami slices. Shobhit won't even eat a vegetarian thing that's on the same plate as meat, but I happily snacked on grapes and quite a few cheese cubes, so long as they weren't literally touching the salami. There were also plates of salted chocolate chip cookies, relatively small ones, and I had two of those. (Shobhit also had two of the cookies, as there was no meat on those plates.) I was still glad I took Shobhit's advice and nuked a frozen bean and cheese burrito before we left.
They had a bar as well, and there you paid for drinks and other snacks like candy. I shared a couple of different drinks with Shobhit over the course of the evening, including a very small pour of a glass of wine; a vodka, orange juice and cranberry juice cocktail I can't remember the name of; and occasional sips of whiskey Shobhit also brought in his flask.
Shobhit pointed out a few of the young guys in the crowd who were either really cute or really hot. One guy was in a kind of body suit with a plunging V neck, rather exposing his incrediible pecs like cleavage, and a bowler hat. By complete chance, he sat right next to me in the theater when we all went in to sit down. His partner, a costume desiner, had come to the event wearing a gown, and later won one of the awards.
Now, just as I did last night
on my socials, I have to mention how much fun I had—honestly, a lot more fun than I expected, given that I had not seen a single one of these many local shows being celebrated.
I don't know if this is just a community of people who really support each other, or the fact that it was their first in-person ceremony in five years, or perhaps both. But the enegery was infectious, and I love how crazy excited the crowd got when a lot of the winners were announced. The two hosts, Jimmy Shields and Alexadra Henderson, were both informal and organized, natutal entertainers who did a fantastic job. Had I gotten a chance to say anything to either one of them I would have said so.
The
winner of the Gregory A. Falls Sustained Achievement Award was
a Black woman named Vivian Phillips, a local arts leader and more, and she was the only award recipient given time to speak during the ceremony—the other award recipients were guided to another room where they could record an acceptance speech, as time was right, and everyone was supposed to be out of the space by 10 p.m. And Vivian Phillips did something interesting with her speech: she was clearly honored and happy to have been recognized in this way, but she also went out of her way to say that giving Black, Indigenous and people of color awards is all well and good, but the local arts community should be doing more to promote works by and about these communities. It felt like a gentle call-out of the very proceedings themselves, which had also hired two Black people—one a man and one a woman—to host the ceremony. They were all delightful, as I already noted, but her point was that it means more to see more productions by and about people from these communities. (To be fair, one of the hosts, Jimmy Shields, actually won the aware for Outstanding Choreography. And the other, Alexandra Henderson, was a nominee for Outstanding Performance - Musical.)
Something else I noticed, and I would be interested to know how long they have been doing this: the Gregory Awards do not separate performance categories by gender. Instead, the categories have 10 nominees and they announce two winners each. Presumably they are still careful not to make both of the winners men, but this is a way to include any nominees who may be nonbinary. It's a pretty simple solution, actually, and I don't see why the Oscars or the Emmys couldn't do the same thing. I just double checked and not even the Tony Awards are doing this, although it sounds like they will likely do something similar to the Gregory Awards's approach soon.
Shobhit and I stayed long enough to see the screen-announced winners, and once Shobhit confirmed he was not needed for anything, we were on our way, not long after 9:00. He decided to get a couple of naans from an Indian restaurant on Queen Anne Ave, which made us miss the #8 back, but we caught a RapidRide D bus downtown and then managed to transfer to a #12 back up the hill pretty quickly, getting us home just minutes later than we'd have gotten home with the #8.
— पांच हजार छह सौ निन्यानबे —
[posted 12:30 pm]
