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As the school year comes to a close, the high school theater departments of the greater Cincinnati area are preparing for their annual grand finale, the Cappies Gala. The gala is a high school theater award show held at the Aronoff Center with numerous schools from around Cincinnati in attendance to see who will win awards for their submitted shows.
Each year, the theater department chooses one show to be their Cappies production. This show will have critics in attendance, who are in charge of nominating shows for awards. These awards are called Cappies awards and are presented at the annual Cappies Gala.
“It’s just so much fun,” Mya Verticchio, ‘25, who played Hunyak in “Chicago”, the chosen Cappies production this year, said. “Everyone gets together and dresses up and it’s just really cool to see all the other shows and nominees.”
Nominations are made after all of the critics, who are high school students from across the Greater Cincinnati area, have watched & reviewed all of their assigned shows and voted on which of the 16 participating schools will have their candidates nominated. Though there are numerous categories for student actors and critics to win ranging from “Best Musical” to “Best Up & Coming to Critic,” the competition is heavy as always with there only being six nominees per category.
When asked about his chances of winning his category of “Best Comic Actor in a Male Role in a Musical,” Roger Bacon SENIOR Alex Navarro had this to respond.
“I think I have a pretty good shot because people came up to me after that show, and said, ‘You know, Alex, honestly, I think you were the best part of that show.’,” Navarro said. “Even if I don’t win, getting nominated is a big thing. I think I’ll celebrate by maybe continuing with theater. If people really thought I did a great job with that role, I kind of owe it to them.”
WHHS has 28 nominations this season, the most of any school, for this year’s production of “Chicago.” Mercy McCauley’s “Once Upon a Mattress” and Roger Bacon’s production of “Spamalot,” a musical spoof of the Monty Python series, are the runner ups with 24 and 18 awards respectively.
“Beside [from] being vulgar for a high school show, we went above and beyond with the choreography and all of the little details,” Verticchio said when asked about what made Chicago stand out from other shows.
At the gala, along with the typical presentation of awards and the acceptance speeches of the winners that follow afterwards, each school is given a chance to present an excerpt or a musical number from their show for the whole audience to enjoy.
“It’s really cool that each school can perform on the Aronoff [stage], which is the same place where so many other famous shows have been performed,” Navarro said. “It’s such a cool experience to be backstage and getting ready to perform on that stage. Roger Bacon does not have a very large theater program and the fact that we’re able to sometimes compete with different schools for different awards, it means a lot. It’s a really rewarding experience that doesn’t feel necessarily super biased towards different schools of different caliber theater departments.”
The Cappies Organization has 12 chapters across the US and Canada, with the Cincinnati charter forming in 2001. The main focus of the organization is to encourage critical thinking via student written reviews and also to highlight achievements in theater.
“I think [the Gala] gives you a chance to bond and connect with other people in [the theater] community,” Tre Hall, ‘25, who played the Master of Ceremonies in Chicago, said. “You can meet more theater people from other schools and connect more with theater people from your school.
