MEGAN WILKERSON

Hi Jim,

I regret not being there to get into a good boozy fight with you about this but I guess sharing my thoughts as they stand at this point (and please do pass them on) is the best I'm going to be able to do.....

I've been following this conversation from here in Ashland and would like to chime in a bit. To begin with, having both won and lost awards in Chicago, I would say that winning is nice and endlessly loosing sucks. But it can be very good publicity for the companies, and the artists involved without being overly onerous if handeled compasionately and honestly.

Hedi already alluded to this I think but mostly what I'm feeling a need to address is the idea of Milwaukee as a close knit community . That was not my experience. I, in fact, found it to be a very "clique" oriented city (with a few notable exceptions).

I was involved in Milwaukee Theatre for more than 5 years (not including having been a student at Caroll longer ago than I care to admit to). Between 2002 & 2008 I designed scenery for or assisted on more than 15 productions at almost every company in town that can aford to hire designers, as well as a few that can't. I helped found a performance collective, taught at the University and at Carroll College, attended shows regularly almost everywhere, and was rarely recognized by anyone in the theatre community and this included people I'd worked with multiple times. Think what you will of me as a designer, love my work, hate it, find me a pain in the butt, or love to drink with me, that is not the point. I was, in fact, a member of that community and never experienced the kind of close knit group some of you describe not wanting to jepordize. In fact I, personally, felt more instantly welcome in the Chicago Theatre Community.

I'm relating my personal experience not to express sour grapes, but to point out that awards (and here I also agree with others that there may be more value to something like "Citations", and those of you who do know me know how I feel about a good party.) have the advantage of sometimes bringing the un or under recognized to the forefront. There are talented people lurking around town you don't even know about.

On a final note I think that competitiveness is an attitude and the existance or lack thereof is not dependant on an award system. The truth is that we are in a competitive art-form/business. Denying that part of our reality doesn't make it go away. Working with it and still managing to be loving, compasionate human beings however, does.

Megan Wilkerson
Scenic Design Assistant
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Ashland, OR