I just had the interesting experience of watching the live Webcast of the 2011 Ovations Awards, which are the Big Boy of LA’s theater awards season. And, do you know, it was an absolute pleasure to be able to sit down in front of my computer with a nice iced tea, holding my beautiful torty cat Catullus, and watch the ceremony without having to ransack all the city’s thrift shops for just the perfect purple smoking jacket, take 10 buses to Thousand Oaks, and then attempt to hobnob with dozens of theater people who, if you know them, you’ve given them bad reviews and they’d sooner see you with your head in a cement brick. No, really much much, nicer to hang at home, in my bathrobe, and watch the live feed, quipping suitably snarky bon mots into the live feed chat room.
I won’t lie: The technology wasn’t absolutely where it wanted to be yet. The live feed fizzled at several points, the show lost sound now and again, and the camera occasionally shook as though someone was kicking it. And, of course, the show was frequently interrupted by a commercial for that new sitcom starring Betty White, which was particularly irritating as it happened during both of Sally Struthers’ acceptance speeches. However, the promise of the technology is simply marvelous to contemplate – and whatever minor mistakes marginally undercut the broadcast were more than compensated for by the fact that we were still basically able to watch the feed from wherever we were. LA Theater Folks were logging in from all over the globe – in the chat room, folks were showing up from New York, Washington DC, Madrid. It was nothing short of heartwarming.
That said, one can’t say too much about the content of the show. I frankly had never actually seen or been to the Ovations before. It’s weird, but I had always heard that they were the “ne plus ultra” of the awards season. And, yet, the entire spectacle was strangely disappointing. I was expecting really lavish musical numbers and appearances by all the stars who the folks who run the LAWWies and the LADCC awards would kill to get. But instead the show consisted merely of a sort of dull curtain, lit by a gobo containing the images of what appeared to be a set of glowing donuts. And then it was just a rat-a-tat of presenters, award winners, and mostly standard speeches. I question the point of giving out just a cookie cutter list of awards, and listing them in categories of “little,””big,” and “huge.” It just seemed, well, unfocused is the word that occurs to me. It was well intentioned, but I was still quite stunned to discover that the creaky, dysfunctional ceremonies in which I myself have participated actually are more theatrical. However, I do hope that all these awards show continue to do these webcasts. It would be quite an event, for instance, to watch the LA Weekly Awards on the web!
