Green Room Award nominees announced

The Green Room Awards Association this week announced the nominations for the 2009 Awards for excellence on the Melbourne stage.

The recipients will be announced in a ceremony on Monday, March 15 at The Playhouse Theatre, the Arts Centre, Melbourne.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE NOMINEES

The Green Room Awards celebrate all forms of the theatre arts on the professional stage in Melbourne for the preceding calendar year: theatre, music theatre, cabaret, opera and dance. All professional productions having specified minimum Melbourne seasons are eligible for the Awards. The nominations have been made by the Association membership and will be now be voted on by secret ballot.

The panels saw 12 first-run musicals, 14 operas, 54 professional dance works, in excess of 100 cabaret seasons and over 160 plays and hybrid works.

“The Green Room Awards celebrate work first seen on Melbourne’s stages in 2009,” said Dr Mark Williams, President of the Association.

“Each year the theatre community gathers to record our appreciation of what in most cases is now gone forever. These fabulous performers are out there and I urge everyone to get out and see what these wonderful and exciting artists are doing today.”

The Lifetime Achievement Award recipient for 2010 is one of Australia’s most important Australian operatic artists of the last fifty years, the contralto Lauris Elms AM OBE Hon D. Mus. (Syd). She will receive her award at the ceremony. An exhibition featuring some of her life and work will be showing at the Arts Centre, Melbourne from March 11 to June 13. On March 15 the National Theatre Opera School will also announce the recipient of the Lauris Elms Scholarship, first instituted last year. More biographical details are attached.

The Green Room voting year is from January 1st to December 31st. The nominations and awards are made by the Green Room membership of industry professionals, organized into sub-committees for each discipline.