Smooth Sailing for OC Theatre Guild Awards' Fourth Time Around

Chance Theater, The Wayward Artist and Curtis Theatre come up big with a total of 20 awards.

The cast, artists and production team behind Chance Theater's "Jane Austen's Emma, the Musical" accepting the award for Outstanding Production of a Musical. Photo courtesy of OCTG/Francis Gacad

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If the Orange County Theatre Guild’s fourth annual awards ceremony proved anything, it’s that experience is a powerful factor.

Held Monday night, April 28 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ Samueli Theater, the event was a smooth, relatively glitch-free affair apparently handled with ease by a production team largely the same as a year ago.

Under the steady hand of director Shinshin Yuder Tsai, host and MC Brooke Aston Harper and musical director and pianist Kim Le kept the pace from flagging. The result was a 145-minute event during which 26 awards (two award recipients apiece for each lead performance category) were distributed from among 21 categories covering 121 nominations in all.

As compared with past ceremonies, the program was also streamlined, excluding such portions as those delineating and describing the procedures governing the voting and vote-counting processes and other similar technical matters.

And, as in previous years, a small handful of productions held sway. although this year the nominations from the dominant companies were more evenly dispersed versus productions sweeping nearly every category in which they were nominated.

The shows that came up big

With its six awards, the evening’s biggest winner was The Wayward Artist’s production of “The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” the intense 2011 comedy by Stephen Adly Guirgis.

The production edged out Chance Theater’s holiday-time staging of “Jane Austen’s Emma, the Musical,” which captured a total of five awards.

Both companies had additional stagings that snagged OCTG awards. Chance’s “Tiny Beautiful Things” won two awards and “Gloria,” “Alma” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” snagged one apiece, giving the Anaheim Hills company 10 awards in all distributed among five shows.

Wayward was close on Chance’s heels all night, with its raft of wins for “The Mother” and one more for a property that couldn’t be more different: the 2004 Rachel Sheinkin musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

The next-closest competitor to these two behemoths was Curtis Theatre’s production of “Once,” which captured three awards. The three companies – Chance, Wayward and Curtis – accounted for 20 of the evening’s awards, for 80% of the total 25 distributed.

Curtis Theatre’s Kris Kataoka praised Thor Fay for his sound design, saying that it made “Once” “the best-sounding show we’ve ever had at the Curtis.” Kataoka himself also won for the show’s lighting design, While at the podium, he praised all lighting personnel from follow-spot operators to those running the board.

While accepting his award for musical direction of Curtis’ “Once,” Patrick Copeland said he considered himself “lucky” for being able to round up a sizable cast of performers who could do three things the show’s roles require: “Who could sing, who could tell a story, and who could play an instrument. Each member of the cast brought their little slice of musical direction to the show.”

PHOTOS 1 & 2: Chance Theater's cast from "Sweeney Todd" and Curtis Theatre's cast members from "Once" performing during the awards ceremony. PHOTO 3: The Wayward Artist's "The Motherf**ker with the Hat' accepting the Outstanding Production of a Play Award. Photos courtesy of OCTG/Francis Gacad

Odds and Ends

Added this year as new categories were Wig and Hair Design and Fight Direction, while the “Outstanding Achievement” category featured those who specialize in areas such as playwriting, makeup design and puppet design that don’t have enough nominations for a separate category.

Now numbering 30, OCTG’s ever-growing tally of member theater companies, venues and theater organizations now includes new members JStage Irvine and Yorba Linda Spotlight Players. Each captured a win, as did Alchemy Theatre Company, a founding OCTG troupe that up till now had yet to be honored with an award.

Sarah Leonard won for her puppet design for JStage’s “Into the Woods,” and Naomi Groleau for her lead performance in Spotlight’s “All Shook Up,” the Yorba Linda company’s debut production.

Alchemy’s win was among the evening’s more offbeat: father-and-daughter team Jim and Kelsey Lowe shared the award for their properties designs for the show “Puffs.” Jeff Lowe, Alchemy’s artistic director, acknowledged that running a company without its own space for 13 years means “we do more with less,” including using off-site locations like private homes for rehearsals, set construction and all other aspects of production.

Still, it was “The Mother” and “Emma” that dominated. Over the concluding eight categories, one or the other grabbed nine of the final 10 awards handed out.

During his time at the mike, Wayward founder Craig Tyrl said members of O.C.’s Latinx community “did everything needed for ‘Motherf**ker,’ from direction and design to all aspects of the production.”

Wayward left downtown Santa Ana last year after having settled in at the Grand Central Art Center. Its new home is the Irvine United Congregational Church, where Wayward’s hiatus ended and its eighth season continued with the wildly popular “The Motherf**ker with the Hat.”

The doling out of awards Monday night was punctuated with musical numbers from the casts of “All Shook Up,” “Once,” “Jane Austen’s Emma, the Musical,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” and after the final award was given, host Harper delivered an impromptu vocal solo.

PHOTO 1: Brooke Aston Harper, host of the fourth annual OCTG Theatre Awards. PHOTO 2: Yorba Linda Spotlight Player's "All Shook Up" cast performing for the 2025 OCTG Theatre Audience. Photos courtesy of OCTG/Francis Gacad

Notable Quotes

Casey Long, awarded for his direction of “Emma,” told Culture OC, “It warmed my heart to see the talent of these incredible people get recognized on a larger stage ... in a musical based on a Jane Austen novel from 210 years ago.”

Long noted that composer-lyricist Paul Gordon “and our production team found a new heart in one of the original romantic comedies that, in addition to finding both the ‘ahhhhs’ and the ‘hahahas,’ highlights how much better a community can be when someone finds out that they they’re not right about everything, and responds by admitting they’re wrong, learning how to grow, and figuring out a new way to enrich the lives around them.”

From the podium, Aubrey Saverino, who won Lead Performance in a Play for her portrayal of Sugar in Chance’s staging of “Tiny Beautiful Things,” called the lesser-known 2023 stage adaptation “a tough play with a lot of big issues.”

The day after the awards, Oanh Nguyen, founding artistic director of Chance, told Culture OC, “We’re overwhelmed and deeply grateful for the incredible recognition from the voters at last night’s OCTG Awards.”

Nguyen thanked “everyone at OC Theatre Guild and Segerstrom Center for the Arts for an unforgettable event. We all left inspired by the powerful representation across the Orange County theater community – beautiful reminders of the talent, heart and resilience that bring us all together.”

Guild president Amanda DeMaio opened the evening by noting that theater “is a beacon of human connection” and that “being an artist in Orange County is more than a job – it’s a calling.”

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A Complete List of the Evening’s Winners

 Outstanding Production of a Play

“The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” The Wayward Artist

Outstanding Production of a Musical

“Jane Austen’s Emma, the Musical,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Direction of a Play (two recipients due to a rare tie)

Michael Martinez Hamilton, “The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” The Wayward Artist

Katie Chidester, “Tiny Beautiful Things,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Direction of a Musical

Casey Long, “Jane Austen’s Emma, the Musical,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Ensemble of a Play

“The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” The Wayward Artist

Outstanding Ensemble of a Musical 

“Jane Austen’s Emma, the Musical,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Lead Performance in Play

D.X. Machina, “The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” The Wayward Artist

Aubrey Saverino, “Tiny Beautiful Things,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical

Naomi Groleau, “All Shook Up,” Yorba Linda Spotlight Players

Jocelyn A. Brown, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Play

Oscar Emmanuel Fabela, “The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” The Wayward Artist

Will Martella, “Gloria,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Musical

Sadie Alexander, “Jane Austen’s Emma, the Musical,” Chance Theater

Jeff Lowe, “Jane Austen’s Emma, the Musical,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Music Direction

Patrick Copeland, “Once,” Curtis Theatre

Outstanding Choreography

Jennifer Kornswiet, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” The Wayward Artist

Outstanding Scenic Design

Kristin Campbell Coyne, “Tiny Beautiful Things,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Costume Design

Marci Alberti,” The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” The Wayward Artist

Outstanding Lighting Design

Kris Kataoka, “Once,” Curtis Theatre

Outstanding Sound Design

Thor Fay, “Once,” Curtis Theatre

Outstanding Projection Design

Victoria Serra, “33 Variations,” Costa Mesa Playhouse

Outstanding Fight Direction

Martin Noyes, “Alma,” Chance Theater

Outstanding Puppet Design

Sarah Leonard, “Into the Woods,” JStage Irvine

Outstanding Wig & Hair Design

Jeff Weeks,” A Doll’s House, Part 2,” STAGESTheatre

Outstanding Properties Design

Jim Lowe and Kelsey Lowe, “Puffs,” Alchemy Theatre Company