Dezart Performs 12 Desert Star Awards: Most Ever For Esteemed Palm Springs Company
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Dezart Performs 12 Desert Star Awards:
Most Ever For Esteemed Palm Springs Company
Winners Were Announced By The Desert Theatre League October 1
in Live Ceremony at Sun City Palm Desert
3 October 2023 – Palm Springs, CA: Call it the “Little Theatre Company That Could” and does. Now in its 16th season Dezart Performs of Palm Springs (www.dezartperforms.org) won a recording breaking 12 Desert Star Awards – the most ever for the company – including top prize for “Outstanding Drama – Professional for A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGY UNIT AT THE MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER OF NEW YORK CITY and “Outstanding Comedy – Professional” for A BRIGHT NEW BOISE.
“I am always humbled when not only our audiences but the Desert Theatre League judges acknowledge the quality of our work” said Dezart Performs Founding Artistic Director Michael Shaw. “And the fact that many of our awards were in the top main categories is particularly gratifying.”
The complete list of “Desert Star Awards” winners for Dezart Performs are as follows:
Outstanding Production – Comedy – Professional
A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
Outstanding Production of a Drama – Professional
THE GARBOLOGISTS
Outstanding Director of a Comedy – Professional
Michael Shaw, A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
The Michel Cruickshank Award for Outstanding Director of a Drama – Professional
Michael Matthews, CHOIR BOY
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy – Professional
Eric Zak, A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE…
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy – Professional
Nicole Delsack, A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama – Professional
Dennis Renard, CHOIR BOY
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy – Professional
Jacob Cherry, A BRIGHT NEW BOISE
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama – Professional
David Alan Madrick, CHOIR BOY
Outstanding Stage Design – Professional
Jimmy Cuomo, THE GARBOLOGISTS
Outstanding Props
Greg Thorneycroft, THE GARBOLOGISTS
The Bill Groves Award for Outstanding Original Writing
Lindsay Joelle – THE GARBOLOGISTS
Details about the upcoming 16th Season for Dezart Performs follow:
THE THANKSGIVING PLAY
A comedy written by Larissa FastHorse
Directed by Michael Shaw
November 3-5; 10-12, 2023
Good intentions collide with absurd assumptions in Larissa FastHorse’s wickedly funny satire, as a troupe of terminally “woke” teaching artists scrambles to create a pageant that somehow manages to celebrate both Turkey Day and Native American Heritage Month.
“Hilarious. A cheerfully cutthroat production!”
– The New York Times
“Hysterically funny and brutally on target.”
– Forbes
“A hilarious envelope in which [the playwright] delivers a brutal satire about mythmaking, and thus, in a way, about theater itself.”
– The New York Times
* * *
WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME
A dramatic comedy written by Heidi Schreck
Directed by Craig Wells
January 19 – 21; 26 – 28
2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist
2019 Tony Award nominated, Best Play
2019 Obie award for Best New American Play
2019 Off-Broadway Alliance Award, Best New Play
2019 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Play
Fifteen-year-old Heidi earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. In this hilarious, hopeful and achingly human new play, she resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives.
“…brilliantly crafted show, harrowing and funny and humane, that accesses the political through the deeply personal.”
– New York Magazine
“A highly entertaining, deeply informative and ultimately hopeful examination of the document that impacts every single one of us, every single day of our lives.”
– Chicago Sun Times
“This funny, tragic and deeply unsettling one-woman tour de force shows who the US constitution serve — and who it lets down.”
– The Guardian
* * *
A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
A drama written by Samuel D. Hunter
Directed by Michael Shaw
March 1-3; 8-10
2022 Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play
A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD unfolds in a cubicle where two seated people unexpectedly choose to bring one another into their fragile worlds. Keith, a mortgage broker, and Ryan, a yogurt plant worker seeking to buy a plot of land that belonged to his family many decades ago, realize they share a “specific kind of sadness.” At this desk in the middle of America, loan talk opens up into a discussion about the chokehold of financial insecurity and a bond over the precariousness of parenthood. With humor, empathy and wrenching honesty, Hunter commingles two lives and deftly bridges disparate experiences of marginality.
“Must-see heartbreaker of a play!”
– The New York Times
“Another extraordinary play by Samuel D. Hunter!”
– New York Stage Review
“Easily one of the best of the year!”
–The Wall Street Journal
“…one of the most moving new plays of the year!”
– TheatreMania
“‘A Case for the Existence of God’ Finds What Connects Us All and Holiness in Humanity.”– The Observer
* * *
MR. PARKER
A drama written by Michael McKeever
Directed by Randy Brenner
April 12 – 14; 19 — 21
At 54 years old, Terry Parker finds himself at a crossroads in his life. After the loss of his partner of 30 years, he finds himself suddenly single and unable to adjust to a world that has moved on without him. After a night of heavy drinking, he wakes up with a 28-year-old bartender-slash-Uber-driver. These two very different people begin a tentative relationship, and what starts out as a one-night stand becomes a journey of self-discovery for a man trying to let go of the past and move forward, while dealing with the pressures of being middle-aged, gay and alone in the ever-changing landscape of today’s America.
“A very intelligent, absorbing look at contemporary relationships and the conflicts that keep us all from aging with joy and peace of mind. This play is a real discovery!”
– Rex Reed
“The protagonist of this new play by Michael McKeever steps gingerly out of grief’s stasis and into the unknown.”
–The New York Times