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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Mo Brady. Alright, it's been a journey so far finding someone, anyone, who feels that they have the answer to how we can properly, adequately, and responsibly celebrate theatre ensembles. The Helen Hayes Awards in Washington, D.C. gave me a glimmer of hope, but even the structure they have there seems complicated to me. According to Helen Hayes panelist Matthew Kasergis, there are multiple categories a show can be eligible in. And, to add icing on the cake, while the awards organizers provide language to guide panelists in their decision-making, even that language feels remarkably open to interpretation.

I knew there had to be other regional awards ceremonies that recognize ensemble work. The Jeff Awards in Chicago, and perhaps most notably, the Dora Awards in Toronto. Ah, finally, here I thought I could find a sustainable awards model. Like New York City, Toronto is a national mecca for the performing arts, with a long and esteemed track record of both scrappy small shows and major commercial productions. Certainly here I could find an idea of how to move forward. Only to find out that the Dora Awards have recently scrapped their ensemble awards for musical theater. What is going on here? Not only was I finding out that few theater communities could figure out how to celebrate ensemble work, but some of them are even getting rid of that recognition they once had.

I spoke to Dora Awards manager Scott Dermody about the history of celebrating ensembles at the Doras, and why that recognition for musical theater ensembles was recently scrapped. Here's our conversation.

[2:12] Scott Dermody: Hi, would you introduce yourself and tell us where you are calling from today?

[2:20] Scott Dermody: Most certainly. My name is Scott Dermody. I'm the Dora Awards and outreach manager for the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, which is otherwise known as TAPA from the name. You can tell that it's in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and I'm very happy to be here today.

[2:34] Mo Brady: And what are the Dora Awards?

[2:37] Scott Dermody: The Dora Awards are Canada's largest, longest standing performing arts awards for theater, dance, and opera. This would have been our 42nd annual Dora Mavor Moore Awards. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic this past year, there have been no shows. So we have cancelled this year's and hopefully we can get it back in time for the 2022 season. We always celebrate them in June every year. Not this year, unfortunately.

[3:00] Mo Brady: Not this year, but they are, I mean, theater, dance, opera, you guys are celebrating a lot. We can't even get our act together with one genre of performing arts and here you are celebrating three. So first off, respect goes to you. Now, what is your sort of background? Are you from the theater or the dance or the opera world? Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you were brought on to the TAPA team.

[3:24] Scott Dermody: Well, I trained as a performer. My primary background is in acting. Then I started getting involved in producing after I left theater school. I just kind of fell into a job with the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts because I was looking for something a little bit more steady than acting work at the time. I've been with them ever since. It's nine years now that I've been with TAPA in various roles, but for at least the last six, I've been heading up the Dora Awards as the manager.

[3:48] Mo Brady: Will you tell us what categories the Doras celebrate ensemble in theater? What are the, how many and what are they called?

[3:57] Scott Dermody: The Doras have had many changes over the years, but the current incarnation of how we separate our categories and divisions is that we have seven separate and distinct divisions where, as I mentioned, there's theater, there's dance, there's opera, but even within theater, there's theater for young audiences division. Then there's the general theater division, which is typically like a company that has a venue or is a much larger company. There's independent theater, which kind of speaks for itself. More independent companies don't have a venue, smaller scale. Then there's two other divisions as well. We've got the opera division, the dance division, and then the musical theater division is unto itself.

Then there's one division that's a touring division. So any shows that are coming into Toronto that aren't directly produced by a TAPA member company. Throughout those seven divisions, we have a total of 46 categories of awards. Some of them are the same that carry over division to division. Over the years, we have learned to tailor the different categories to the different needs of the divisions. In our most recent reconfiguration in 2017, and for just a touch of background there, back in 2012, TAPA committed to a major review of the Dora Mavor Moore Awards every five years. So looking at all the categories and definitions and divisions, et cetera, et cetera. In 2017, we developed this seven division system and 46 categories where the ensemble categories exist in the independent theater, opera, dance, and theater for young audiences divisions and not in the general theater or the musical theater divisions.

This kind of a change was mostly due to feedback from companies in those divisions who, due to the way that they were working and the nature of the work that they're producing, felt that in some divisions an ensemble category was absolutely necessary. Like in the independent theater division, we have a lot of companies that actually are working in collective collaboration and collective creation that all of the roles are relatively similar size. It's very important to them that they are recognized as a group. Whereas in the general theater division, in the musical theater division, the slightly larger scale productions, those producers and artists felt that it was less important to maintain the ensemble category.

And they opted instead for a performance in a leading role, performance in a featured role structure so that every division has two performance categories, whether it's lead and feature or individual and ensemble.

[6:10] Mo Brady: What are examples of ensembles that have gotten that award? Perhaps you can tell us a little bit about the show, if it may not be familiar to audiences outside of Toronto, or if it's an existing property that we may know, you can just tell us about that show.

[6:25] Scott Dermody: I mean, a show that is done all over the place, 12 Angry Men, it's a very good example of a very ensemble-like production where there's no real lead role. Sure, there are two characters that have a slightly higher status, but the rest of them are very much intrinsic to the nature of the story. That is a production that received nominations for the Dora Awards when it was presented, I think it was 2012, 2013, by Soulpepper Theater in Toronto. They received a nomination for the ensemble category in their division at the time. I don't think it actually received a nomination in Toronto, shockingly enough, but Come From Away springs to mind as a show that has a very strong ensemble style. We did have a few individuals that were nominated from Come From Away, but not the ensemble in total.

It's a show that has come up in this conversation time and again, like 12 Angry Men, there's 12 people, and they are all basically equally featured. But you're throwing a wrench into this whole thing, Scott, when you say that the musical theater category has gotten pushed. I mean, you said that the producers or some producers didn't feel like it was necessary. I'd love to know about the conversations around that.

[7:33] Scott Dermody: For some of the history, there's been some recognition for ensembles, not since the very beginning of the Dora Awards, but since about 10 years into it. It started in 1979. By about 1989, there were ensembles that were registering and receiving nominations for categories and what were then just a couple of divisions. By 2010, we fast forward a little bit where some categories were introduced in the general theater and the independent theater divisions that combined this idea of outstanding performance of a featured individual slash ensemble. So a group of people was competing with an individual. That only held for a couple of years till the review in 2012, where people were coming together and saying, this is absurd.

How can a group compete with an individual and vice versa? So the big review in 2012 split that up, where every division then had three performance categories, where it was outstanding performance of a male performer, a female performer, and of the ensemble. That held from 2012 through to 2017, when we did our next major review, which I was actually part of, where the ensemble category, in addition to these two performance categories for individuals, was becoming seen as a backdoor way of receiving a nomination. Because if I was part of a cast, I could be registered as an individual and as an ensemble. And the ensemble category itself was losing the value of being a standalone category. So actually what we did in 2019, and I'll explain why in a second as well, is to eliminate the idea that I can be registered in both.

So if I'm an individual performer, I could either be registered as an individual or as part of an ensemble, not the entire cast of characters, but an ensemble. If you have a show that has a very strong ensemble and a couple of lead performers, those lead performers would be considered separately from an ensemble of people that have kind of a similar size of role and similar input into the narrative structure. That lent producers the choice of having a little bit of more importance placed on their decisions toward what they put in an ensemble nomination. People weren't putting their ensemble nominations on their resumes because it just wasn't considered valuable. And we were hearing that from casting directors and from agents and things.

To lift it up, we did that separation. What happened in 2019 is we introduced gender-neutral categories. So we eliminated the idea of male and female. Now it's a performance of an individual. And we also had the challenge at the same time where

[9:52] Scott Dermody: The awards had ballooned to these seven divisions, and across the seven divisions, we now had 50 award categories, which in and of itself is great to be able to honor so many people. However, we're a very small organization. We have three full-time staff, as an example. We have a hard cost associated with producing each and every award category, and 50 awards, let alone the statues being created, the cost of those, and then the length of time for the show, we simply could not afford anymore to have that many. So we actually had to pare down a little bit and make a couple of hard decisions. Through extensive consultations with our membership, we determined this twofold option where the members in one division or the other got a bit of a say in, okay, which style would you prefer, lead and featured or individual ensemble?

Because we do have these realities that we're trying to face of being a not-for-profit and trying to honor as many as we can in the best way possible. Unfortunately, in musical theater, the ensemble category has gone by the wayside for now. That's only been for two years though. So we'll see what happens in the future. Like you said, every five years, you're giving yourselves the opportunity to reevaluate. And also, it wasn't that those being celebrated with nominations and wins said that they didn't want an ensemble category. They said, if it is the case that the tapas are a nonprofit and there's only so much that you can do with three full-time staff, we will acknowledge that certain things are more important to us than others. And one of the things that is less important to us is an ensemble award. Is that right?

[11:20] Scott Dermody: I'd say that's the gist of it. Yeah, obviously, that's not going to make everybody happy. When we come out of the pandemic, maybe there'll be a lot more collective creation in musical theater. We will have to adjust as needed if that happens. What you're saying about ensemble and sort of the inclusion of a category that has so many people in each nominee reminds me of a conversation I had with a producer of the Outer Critics Circle Awards here in New York, who said, I produce a sit-down dinner. Every category has a fixed cost. And if I suddenly have five nominees for Best Ensemble, that's 120 more plates I have to pay for. And who's paying for those plates? He said, I would love to pay for those plates. But the reality is I can only do so much. And that is a big ask. And I feel like you're saying something similar.

[12:11] Scott Dermody: Yeah, I mean, I can't miss those hard costs associated with it. You try as much as you can not to transfer those costs to the artists, too. As we know, artists struggle to make a living as it is to attend a ceremony where they're going to be honored. You don't want to have to charge them 1200 bucks to sit in a room, right? From 2012 to 2017, what we ended up having to do was due to some of the limitations the venues were in, literally the seating capacity of some of the venues that we had available to us within our price range, we had to cap how many ensemble members could attend. We did receive grief from that from some of the ensembles, but we were literally at capacity even within that limit.

If you had an ensemble of 50 people, those 50 people could simply not all attend. In some venues, we had to cap it at six, you know, plus a date. And right off the bat, you're thinking there's seven different divisions and all of these ensemble categories, it just multiplies. We don't have a lot of major venues in Toronto that an organization like ours can afford to be in that will accommodate simply that number of people.

[13:05] Scott Dermody: The swings. You aren't really dealing with this because you don't have a musical ensemble category right now. But in the past, who gets nominated? Now you said the producers get to put forth who they want. Does that include swings? Does that include standbys? Is that the opening night cast? Is that the cast when the TAPA judges come? Who is the ensemble? By the letter in the law of the Dora eligibility rules and regulations, it had been stipulated that it's the opening night cast that is eligible to be registered in that category. Prior to 2019, the producer registering the ensemble did not have to identify every individual member of that ensemble. It was simply the ensemble and they didn't have to give us a list of 100 names.

It still remains that it's the opening night cast that is eligible for the award category. Now you have to remember that being a much smaller market than New York, Toronto, we don't actually have a lot of sit-down shows. So the number of swings and the number of standbys is significantly less. That's not to say we don't have them. It's just less frequent. That's not to diminish their roles either. You know, they're very important to a running production. But due to the fact that we don't have long sit-down shows aside from perhaps Come From Away, it becomes less of a priority for producers. Again, that may change, we may see a resurgence of larger scale shows that come in and are here for two years or three years. Not since SARS happened back in what was that? Oh, 405 has the commercial theater world in Toronto recovered from a Tay Day.

[14:34] Scott Dermody: What would a musical theater ensemble category celebrate? If you could dream it up, sky's the limit, you don't have seating capacity of a venue, you don't have to buy award statues, what kind of work would be celebrated and who would be celebrated? To me, whether it's a collective creation, or you have an ensemble and a number of leads in either event, to me that ensemble work is a group of people working together that if one of those or two of those people, those characters aren't there, regardless of who's playing them, then the cohesion would sort of fall apart where the work is relatively equal, everyone's putting in the same amount of effort and blood, sweat and tears into that role, regardless of who's doing it on what day.

So if you're a swing, you should be considered equal to someone who's doing it on the regular basis. If you're a standby, you should be honored just the same. I recognize some of the practical challenges of that, however, in getting jurors out to see those individuals who are up there, but if the ensemble is working correctly, then everyone brings their own nuance to it. But that ensemble as a whole should still be able to be seen as the same.

[15:36] Scott Dermody: I like the way you said that. I hadn't thought about it that way. It's a tough one to consider against the practical challenges, but Blue Sky, everyone that is part of that ensemble should be considered part of the ensemble and honored as such if the honor is available. I'd love to have ensemble categories in every division. Those choices are sometimes not forced upon us, but are just made of necessity. Our definition of an ensemble for the organization and for the Dora Mavenmore Awards itself, we intentionally leave somewhat broad so that it can encompass different types of ensembles. So if you have that group of people who are in the opening night cast or something like that, it's not necessarily only those individuals if there are exceptions that can be made. It really depends on each individual situation. We don't hard and fast define ensemble. We have four sort of guidelines in our eligibility rules.

[16:23] Scott Dermody: What are they? Our outstanding performance of an ensemble category, which is the same across the four divisions which currently have it. The producer may choose to register all or some of the performers, a minimum of two onstage performers in a production which meets all other eligibility criteria, blah, blah, blah. A performer may not be registered both as an individual or as a member of an ensemble, but you may only be listed once. For registering your ensemble, this is to the producers, you might consider the following as non-prescriptive guidelines. One, a performance involving several performers whose roles are of equal importance. Similar to 12 Angry Men, Come From Away. Two, two or more performers taken as a whole that reflect a degree of cohesion in their work.

Three, an ensemble cast made up of performers in which the principal performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance in a production or four, an ensemble performance is characterized by a group of performers appearing to be so deeply dependent on each ensemble member's contribution that the work of this group is greater than the sum of its parts. That fourth point there is the one I touched on a moment ago where I feel more connected to philosophically, I suppose.

[17:25] Scott Dermody: I want to point out something. Nothing in there about like chorus, nothing about time steps, nothing about building a barricade, manipulating a gorilla puppet. You are celebrating collaborative storytelling. We don't make the distinction between whether you have lines or not, or whether you're part of the chorus. I know for a fact that in some of our opera categories, for example, the Canadian Opera Company often registers their ensemble. They have huge ensembles, they have a hundred member ensembles, and all of them are included in that. We may or may not receive a full list of all of those hundred names. Even if you're just moving a chair that is on stage, you're technically part of the chorus, then you're technically part of that registration and potentially resulting nomination, yeah?

[18:06] Scott Dermody: That's part of the conversation that we have in the commercial theater in New York when we say ensemble, we're really talking about the non-principal performers. And yeah, I think when I've had conversations with you or with others about what we want to celebrate, it is not that. It is the Come From Aways, it's the Indecences, it's the Sixes, it's the Inheritances, it's the collaborative storytelling where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Not a way to celebrate people who don't have their name above the title, which is interesting.

[18:35] Scott Dermody: I think that our definition leaves room for it, even though we don't call it out specifically. Insofar as where you say, is a group of performers appearing to be deeply dependent on each ensemble member's contribution, that's not necessarily saying that the entire cast is that way. So if you're saying an ensemble performance, this group of people is potentially that group of people who are separate from the principals. We left that open to interpretation on purpose that way. Yes, we take collective creation and that collective storytelling into account, and it's important in Toronto because there's a lot of that work happening. But I think that fourth point encompasses the more traditional work that's being done where it's a very separate principals and chorus type of work.

[19:15] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Scott Dermody for sharing his stories with us today. The Ensemblist was produced today by Anna Alltide, Jackson Klein, and me, Mo Brady. Please rate and review The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. Thanks for listening. Until next time.