Earlier this week, the Helen Hayes Awards honored the best professional theaters in the D.C. area.
This weekend, the Brandon Victor Dixon Awards will honor the best local high school musicals in a third annual ceremony at the National Theatre in D.C. on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Eligible high schools must be located within a 25-mile radius of National Theatre and submit an application for consideration, after which judges are sent to each school to evaluate and provide constructive feedback.
This year’s finalists for Best Musical include Fairfax Academy for Communication and the Arts’ “Cry-Baby,” Gonzaga College High School’s “Mary Poppins,” Oakton High School’s “Pippin,” Our Lady of Good Counsel High School’s “Tuck Everlasting,” South County High School’s “Singin’ In the Rain,” South Lakes High School’s “Big Fish: School Edition,” and Washington-Liberty High School’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
Best Actress finalists include Meera Ayyar of Oakton High School’s “Pippin,” Shiri Cohen of Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School’s “Into the Woods,” Celeste Collins of Washington-Liberty High School’s “Sweeney Todd,” Itsuko Scoville of South Lakes High School’s “Big Fish: School Edition,” and Kaylee William of Fairfax High School’s “Anastasia: The Musical.”
Best Actor finalists include Colt Craddock of Oakton High School’s “Pippin,” August Rivers of South Lakes High School’s “Big Fish,” Ryan Robbins of Walt Whitman High School’s “Cabaret,” Nate Smith of Fairfax High School’s “Anastasia: The Musical,” and Jonah Uffelman of Fairfax Academy for Communication and the Arts’ “Cry-Baby.”
Finally, Outstanding Achievement in Technical Theatre finalists include Andrew Beasley and Leah Lewis of South County High School; Cecilia Cantarilho, Taylor Kim and Jamie Chung of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School; Sarah Finke of Winston Churchill High School; Colin Frankel and Anisa Sanders of Walt Whitman High School; Henry Green of W.T. Woodson High School; Noah Kennedy, Anna Leo and August Rivers of South Lakes High School; Hayden Palmer of The Field School; and Erika Sjetnan-Day of Washington-Liberty High School.
The regional competition determines which local performers will move on to the 15th annual National High School Musical Theatre Awards, also known as The Jimmy Awards, which will be held at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre in New York City on June 24.
The awards are named after Gaithersburg, Maryland-native Brandon Victor Dixon, who starred in the Tony-winning revival of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” (2014) and the Emmy and Grammy-nominated telecast of “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert” on NBC. He has also earned Tony nominations for “The Color Purple” (2006), “Shuffle Along” (2016) and “Hell’s Kitchen” (2024), meaning he’ll compete at this year’s Tony Awards on June 16.
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