Risk brought reward Monday as Floyd Collins, the Actors' Playhouse production of Adam Guettel's challenging musical about a doomed man trapped in a cave, waltzed off with seven Carbonell Awards during a glitzy show and ceremony at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

Though a lamb at the box office, the musical won the lion's share of acclaim at the 28th annual Carbonells, where no other production of the 2002-2003 season got more than two of the awards honoring the best in South Florida and touring theater.

The love-fest for the musically complex show, which won the Carbonells for best musical, best director (David Arisco) and best actor (Tally Sessions), even spilled over into an award for Gene Seyffer's abstract ''cave'' set, which triumphed over far more elaborate designs.

With an additional Carbonell for Mary Lynne Izzo's whimsical set-turned-costume work on The Big Bang, the Coral Gables-based Actors' Playhouse led all South Florida companies with eight Carbonells.

14 AWARDS FOR MIAMI-DADE

Miami-Dade theaters were dominant again this year, winning 14 Carbonells, followed by five for Palm Beach County theaters and a single Carbonell for a Broward troupe that no longer exists. Only one of those Miami-Dade awards -- John PaulAlmon's as best supporting actor in a musical -- went to work from the Coconut Grove Playhouse, South Florida's largest regional theater.

On the dramatic side, Manalapan's Florida Stage and Boca Raton's Caldwell Theatre Company split major honors. Constant Star, a play-with-music about civil rights and feminist pioneer Ida B. Wells, brought best production of a play and best ensemble honors to Florida Stage. Caldwell artistic director Michael Hall and leading man John Felix won best director and best actor honors, respectively, for their work on Fortune's Fool, a new version of an Ivan Turgenev play.

Actress Laura Turnbull won top acting honors in both musical and play categories for her work in Blood Brothers at the Shores Performing Arts Theatre (the musical) and Crimes of the Heart (the play, also at the Shores). In winning the latter, she beat out her own performance in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune at GableStage in Coral Gables.

CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

That company won its only Carbonell for David Kwiat's supporting performance in another play-with-music, Dirty Blonde. Kwiat was also honored with the annual Bill Hindman Award for his career achievement as both an actor and a New World School of the Arts teacher.

Two Hispanic playwrights -- one just starting out, the other at the top of his game -- were also celebrated at the Carbonells.

Ivonne Azurdia, a 2000 New World School of the Arts grad, won the best new work award for Tin Box Boomerang, a play she wrote for Miami's edgy Mad Cat Theatre Company. And former Miamian Nilo Cruz, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics opens on Broadway on Sunday, was honored along with New Theatre with a special achievement award for creating Anna at the intimate Coral Gables theater.

Fuente: The Miami Herald
Noviembre - 2003