The Jimmy awards, a yearly showcase for the best in high school musical theatre, held its 10th annual ceremony in New York this week. Hosted by Tony award winner (and spot-on Melania impersonator) Laura Benanti, the awards show saw 80 of the country’s foremost high school stage actors gather in Manhattan for a celebration of musical theatre and Broadway’s next generation of talent. And judging by the students’ opening number, the future of the Great White Way is in good hands.
The nominees, who competed against thousands in regional theatre competitions to make it to New York, kicked off the ceremony with a medley of Broadway hits both old and new, from 2018 Tony nominees Mean Girls and Frozen to classics like West Side Story and A Chorus Line. Directed by Van Kaplan, whose credits include An American in Paris, and choreographed by Keisha Lalama, the students toiled with their numbers over a week of intensive training sessions at NYU before performing it on the same Broadway stage where the Lion King has been in production since 2006.
On Monday, top honors went to Reneé Rapp of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Andrew Barth Feldman of New York, both of whom were presented with a $10,000 check to further their education in the arts and eligibility for four-year merit and need-based scholarships to the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Department of Drama.
“I really wish the Jimmy awards existed in the late 1900s,” said 38-year-old Benanti – a Tony winner for her portrayal of Louise in Gypsy – in her introductory remarks. “I would’ve given a solid pinky to be in a room with this many teenagers who love musical theatre.”
For many of those teens, like Chicago’s Darian Goulding, the Jimmys marked their first-ever visit to New York City. “We were in Times Square yesterday and it felt very fake, because I’ve only seen it in pictures,” said Goulding, nominated for his leading role in his high school’s production of Beauty and the Beast. “It’s very cool to see a show and hang out with these people who get what I’m doing. We all understand each other, we have this common language, because we all do theatre.”
Though the capstone to their week in Manhattan was getting the chance to perform on a Broadway stage, the Jimmy nominees count a visit to Dear Evan Hansen, a partnering sponsor of the ceremony, among the highlights of the trip. “We all sat in the front row and I look down the aisle and we’re all sobbing,” recalls Goulding. “It made me realize that musical theatre can take people out of their life, wherever they may be. When you walk into a theatre, it’s a light in darkness.”
More so than most, Benanti knows the value of having an awards ceremony in honor of budding talent, having won the Papermill Playhouse Rising Star award her junior year of high school. Benanti, also known for small-screen turns in Supergirl and The Good Wife, credits the accolade for launching her career. “The Papermill Playhouse award led to me then being cast as the understudy to Maria in the Sound of Music on Broadway when I was 18, and then taking over that role when I was 19,” she told the Guardian. “The kids that are performing today, that was the beginning of the life that I have now. So I know how important these sort of awards can be.”
The Jimmys, in just a decade, have emerged as a bona fide pipeline to Broadway for America’s theatre hopefuls: Eva Noblezada, a finalist in 2013, scored a Tony nomination last year for her part in Miss Saigon, while other Jimmys vets have appeared in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and the touring company of Les Miserables.
Based on the Gene Kelly awards in Pittsburgh and Tommy Tune awards in Houston, two of the country’s first local high school theatre competitions, the Jimmys were conceived of in honor of the late Jimmy Nederlander, whose organization is one of the country’s largest owners of live theatre venues. Four years ago the Broadway League Foundation took over the awards, nearly doubling the Jimmy’s regional participants and partnering with the Department of Education on initiatives like Broadway Bridges, which makes sure high school students are able to attend a Broadway show.
“Jimmy Nederlander is the father of theatre to many people in this country, so we thought, let’s do something for him,” said Charlotte St Martin, president of the BLF. “He was such a believer in theatre education, so it means a lot that we’re expanding our influence across the country.”
“What the Jimmys are is a real-life Glee,” she added, “right here in New York City”.
