The Colorado Theatre Guild ushered in a new era with Monday’s 19th annual Henry Awards at the Lone Tree Arts Center. And while they were trying to crack the door open for nonbinary actors, they actually blew it wide open for women. And changed the awards game forever.

Acting on behalf of what it calls “positive change,” the Guild this year has eliminated gender consideration from all individual acting categories. That means no more “outstanding actor” or “actress” in favor of “outstanding performance” in leading and supporting roles in plays and musicals.

The Guild has morphed all 16 of its previous individual actor categories into eight groups of larger, genderless supercategories. Each has been expanded from the traditional five nominees to 10, with the top two vote-getters (and ties) sharing the award – regardless of gender. That means the number of awards essentially stays the same. More important, the Guild says, openly nonbinary performers who do not define themselves as either male actors or female actresses will no longer be forced to choose a gender they believe does not fit them.

“Tonight is particularly special because for the first time in the history of the Henry Awards, you will not hear outstanding ‘actor’ and ‘actress’ tonight, you’ll hear ‘performer,'” Colorado Thatre Guild President Betty Hart said to cheers and a smattering of boos in her opening remarks.

“That is a direct response to this beautiful community who has been saying, ‘What about our friends who are not male, who are not female? Why should they have to choose?’ Well now they don’t. You’re simply recognized for your excellence, just like we did with all the other categories.” 

Frankly, no one had a clue how it would all play out until Monday night. But going in, we knew that just more than 60% of the nominee pool identifies as men. There was some concern that putting everyone together would inadvertently diminish women.

But, while it’s impossible to state empirically without knowing how each honoree identifies, women took home the lion’s share of the individual acting prizes on Monday, and by a huge margin. It can be definitely stated that 11 of Monday’s 17 individual winners would have been considered as actresses – and only six as (male) actors – under the old system. That’s 65 percent of the wins going to women –an enormous turnaround from the nominations.

(It is believed that none of his year’s 17 acting winners identifies as openly nonbinary., although some in the nominee pool do.) 

In the end, only three of the eight acting categories produced what would be considered the traditional male/female split. Three categories shut men out entirely, while one eliminated women. (Another included a tie, producing one male and two female-identifying winners.)

All of which, in the end, clearly makes this the Year of the Woman at the Henry Awards. The strong slate of 11 honorees includes a wide range of performances, including Anne Penner in “Grounded” revisiting her searing portrayal of a pregnant U.S. Air Force pilot who is assigned to guide bomb-dropping drones from a base near Las Vegas. Bas Bleu Theatre founder and Colorado Theatre Guild Lifetime Achievement Award winner Wendy Ishii picked up more hardware for playing an elderly woman determined to revisit her childhood home in the classic drama “The Trip to Bountiful” in Fort Collins. And one of the most dynamic performances of this or any other year was Clark Destin Jones starring in Give 5’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” which will be remounted Nov. 6-23 at the new Ballyhoo, 3300 Tejon St.

Two castmates won individual acting awards: Rosa Isabella Salvatierra (lead) and Leslie Sophia Pérez (featured) in the DCPA Theatre Company’s  “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter,” and, in an historic first for the little Firehouse Theatre Company, Miranda Byers (lead) and Kelly Uhlenhopp (featured) both won for “Perfect Arrangement,” a play about two gay couples posing as straight in the 1950s.

The two awards are the first in the storied history of Firehouse, a company started by Colorado Free University founder John Hand in 2002. He was murdered in 2004, but his company (and school) have been stewarded since by his remarkable sister, Helen Hand.    

It will be fascinating to see how the Colorado theater community responds to a full year passing without any woman being recognized as a featured actress in a musical – traditionally the strongest and most competitive category among female actors at any level of local theater. Or any man being honored for acting in a play, either in a leading or supporting role. The women swept both categories. Same for featured actor in a musical.

The debate has only just begun.

The gender change clearly stole focus from what would normally have been this year’s Henrys headline, which is one of the biggest upsets in the award program’s nearly two dozen years: The most honored company of the year was not the Tony Award-winning DCPA Theatre Company or the Arvada Center, the two companies that typically win the lion’s share of these awards. No, the belle of this year’s ball was the Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre, which has been delivering rock-solid, professional musicals in Grand Lake, about a 90-minute drive west of Denver, since 1966.

Rocky Mountain Rep took a leading seven Henry Awards on Monday, including the big prize of the night, outstanding musical, for “Come From Away,” the story of how a small town in Nova Scotia became ground zero for compassion on 9/11. It won five awards, most by any staging (play or musical) this year.

The DCPA Theatre Company, meanwhile, won six awards, including outstanding new play (or musical) for Denver-born Jake Brasch’s “The Reservoir,” a Denver story that has been blowing up all over the country since premiering here in January.

The shocker is that Henry Award judges afforded just one design award to the DCPA’s generally Broadway-level creatives: Tony Cisek for creating the world of “The Hot Wing King.” Next up: Four for “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat” by Lakewood’s Performance Now, a company that always engenders Henry Awards love. (It came in with 14 nominations this year.)

The Arvada Center, which often takes Henry Awards home by the wheelbarrow, won just two this year – and none for its celebrated regional premiere of “Waitress.” Of all the next-day head-scratching sure to be taking place today, the fact Anne Terze-Schwarz has nothing to show for her other-worldly performance as the adorably damaged Jenna is the scratchiest.

The awards for plays were downright strange. Curious Theatre won the prestigious Outstanding Play award for “Downstate,” the hard-hitting story of a man who appears at the door of a halfway house to confront his childhood abuser. That’s no surprise. What’s odd is that’s the only award the vaunted Curious Theatre Company won for its entire season. Usually, the play that wins the top prize wins a few other awards, too, for acting, direction or technical work. But not so for “Downstate.”

In fact, no play by any company won more than two awards. Instead, five won two awards each. 

The only double-winner for the night was lighting designer Vance McKenzie, who won both for “National Bohemians” at the Miners Alley Performing Arts Center and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” for Performance Now.

The reason he can win for two different shows is because three years ago, the Colorado Theatre Guild took the extraordinary step of splitting most every category into two tiers based on the budget size of its member companies. (The dividing line between Tier 1 and 2 is an annual budget above and below $500,000.) So McKenzie won in both the small and large budget categories.

McKenzie accomplished something else that is rare on Monday, along with John Hauser, who won the Outstanding Sound Design award (large budgets) for Miners Alley’s “National Bohemians. That means both McKenzie and Hauser won awards in their categories for the second year in a row.

Another repeat winner was Jennifer Burnett, who followed up her win as a featured actress in Performance Now’s “The Music Man” a year ago with a win Monday in the expanded “featured performer” category for her work in “Cabaret” for the Platte Valley Theatre Arts in Brighton.

The Colorado Theatre Guild is a membership-based nonprofit. Its pool of judges adjudicated 170 different productions by 57 member companies, resulting in nominations for 28 companies and at least one win for 15.

Among the many companies left on the outside looking in on Monday were the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company, Town Hall Art Center, Candlelight Dinner Playhouse. the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Creede Repertory Theatre, Theatre Aspen, Colorado Springs Theatreworks, Vintage Theatre, Su Teatro and others. Other than a sound award for the Springs Ensemble Theatre, nothing south of Lakewood won an award this year.

The Henry Awards are presented as a full evening of entertainment directed by Kenny Moten, the Denver Gazette’s 2023 Colorado Theatre Person of the Year. The evening was scheduled to include live performances from each of the five nominees for outstanding musical. Joining “Come from Away” in that group were  the Arvada Center’s “Waitress” and “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, the DCPA Theatre Company’s “Little Shop of Horrors” and Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre’s “The Music Man.”

Monday’s  program offered several surprises. Denver School of the Arts rising seniors Grayson Allensworth and Maya Eisbart sang live during the playing of the annual memorial video.

And film and TV star John Carroll Lynch, who grew up in Denver, flew in at his own expense to present his friend and mentor, the enigmatically named K.Q., with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

KQ, among other things, has been creating and directing an annual jukebox musical for Magic Moments – a company that casts able-bodied and disabled performers side by side – for more than 40 years. He also directed Lynch in his first play when he was 16 – in the musical “Guys & Dolls.”

“I have never worked with any artist more successful than KQ,” said Lynch, who is presently featured in the film “Sorry, Baby” and the highly rated Amazon Prime crime series “Ballard.”

“KQ has touched and changed the lives of thousands of performers, musicians and technicians;

tens of thousands in the audience. And all for one purpose: To remind us, to let us know, to

help us feel that we are not alone. That no one is less loved. No one is less than. No one is left out.”

Hart announced a second straight $1,000 donation from the Colorado Theatre Guild to the Denver Actors Fund, which has helped Colorado theater artists pay down their medical bills by $1.7 million since 2014.

2024-25 HENRY AWARD WINNERS

See a complete list of the nominees here

OUTSTANDING PLAY

• “Downstate,” Curious Theatre Company

OUTSTANDING MUSICAL

• ”Come From Away,” Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre

OUTSTANDING NEW PLAY OR MUSICAL

• “The Reservoir,” by Jake Brasch, DCPA Theatre Company

DIRECTOR OF A PLAY

Rick Barbour, “Grounded,” Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company

DIRECTOR OF A MUSICAL  (tie)

• Jeff Duke, “Come from Away,” Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre

MUSICAL DIRECTION

• Michael Querio, “The Music Man,” Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre

LEADING PERFORMER IN A PLAY (large companies)

• Anne Penner, “Grounded,” Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company

• Rosa Isabella Salvatierra, “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter,” DCPA Theatre Company

LEADING PERFORMER IN A PLAY (small companies, tie)

• Miranda Byers, “Perfect Arrangement,” Firehouse Theater Company

• Wendy Ishii, “The Trip to Bountiful,” Bas Bleu Theatre Company

• Johnathan Underwood, “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” Firehouse Theater Company

LEADING PERFORMER IN A MUSICAL (large companies)

Shabazz Green, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” Arvada Center

Luiza Vitucci, “Come From Away,” Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre

LEADING PERFORMER IN A MUSICAL (small companies)

Clark Destin Jones, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” Give 5 Productions

• Jennasea Pearce, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” Performance Now

FEATURED PERFORMER IN A PLAY (large companies)

• Isaiah Tyrelle Boyd, “The Hot Wing King,” DCPA Theatre Company

• Leslie Sophia Pérez, “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter,” DCPA Theatre Company

FEATURED PERFORMER IN A PLAY (small companies)

• Heather Ostberg Johnson, “The 39 Steps,” OpenStage Theatre & Company

• Kelly Uhlenhopp, “Perfect Arrangement,” Firehouse Theater Company

FEATURED PERFORMER IN A MUSICAL (large companies)

•  Will Branner, “Little Shop of Horrors,” DCPA Theatre Company

• Mitchell Lewis, “The Music Man,” Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre

FEATURED PERFORMER IN A MUSICAL (small companies)

• Jennifer Burnett, “Cabaret,” Platte Valley Theatre Arts

• Jessica Sotwick, “Sweeney Todd,” StageDoor Theatre

ENSEMBLE

“Come From Away,” Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre

CHOREOGRAPHY

• Jennifer Lupp, “Come From Away,” Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre

COSTUME DESIGN (large companies)

Kevin Copenhaver, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” Arvada Center

COSTUME DESIGN (small companies)

Susan Rahmsdorff-Terry, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” Performance Now

LIGHTING DESIGN (large companies)

Vance McKenzie, “National Bohemians,” Miners Alley Performing Arts Center

LIGHTING DESIGN (small companies, tie)

• Brett Maughan, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” Give 5 Productions

• Vance McKenzie, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” Performance Now

SCENIC DESIGN (large companies)

Tony Cisek, “The Hot Wing King,” DCPA Theatre Company

SCENIC DESIGN (small companies)

Andrew Bates, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” Performance Now

SOUND DESIGN (large companies)

• John Hauser, “National Bohemians,” Miners Alley Performing Arts Center

SOUND DESIGN (small companies, tie)

• Brendan O’Hara, “Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!),” Breckenridge Backstage Theatre

• Kitty Robbins, “On Clover Road,” Springs Ensemble Theatre

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

• KQ, Artistic Director, Magic Moments