Arrowhead Drama Receives Jerry Awards For Les Miserables

Arrowhead Drama’s fall production of Les Miserables earned eleven Jerry Awards in the 2021/2022 Jerry Awards. This is the first time that Arrowhead Drama has participated  with a musical in the Jerry Awards. Arrowhead Drama usually puts on two plays every school year, while this year they did a musical, Les Miserables, and a play, Trixie, the Teen Detective. 

According to The Jimmy Awards, the Jerry Awards is one of Wisconsin’s High School Musical Awards Programs that encourages, recognizes, and honors excellence in high school musical theater. 

The Jimmy Awards are at the national level where winners and finalists can earn scholarships. The Jerry Awards are at the state level where it includes Wisconsin schools and selects two nominees to go on to earn a Jimmy Award. 

According to the Overture Center, schools can apply to participate in the Jerry Awards by filling out an application about the show and show dates so professionals can come and review the show. The panel of professionals then gets together and pick shows for each award. The deadline for the 2021/2022 Jerry Awards was May 15th, 2022. 

The awards were originally the Tommy Awards in 2009 and were renamed to the Jerry Awards in 2017. There are sixteen different Jerry Award categories that productions could earn an award in. 

According to Isthmus, the awards were originally the Tommy’s with Tom Wopat being a Wisconsin-born actor and supporting youth theater. The awards were changed to the Jerry’s when W. Jerome Frautschi “famously donated $205 million to build the Overture Center in the 1990s.” 

According to the Overture Center Jerry Awards Participation Guide, the award categories are all outstanding for each aspect of the production such as overall production, choreography, scenic design, lighting design, direction, and more. 

Ursula Rose, a senior at Arrowhead, said, “Our hard work in Les Mis really paid off. Every single person involved helped make this show great.”

Arrowhead Drama received the highest award that any production could earn with “Outstanding Musical”. The award looks at the production as a whole from tech and scene changes to acting and singing. 

Receiving the “Outstanding Musical” award involves the cast having to prepare a song from the show to perform at the ceremony. The “Outstanding Musical” gets awarded to eight shows that were outstanding in all aspects of the show. 

Three cast members from Les Miserables were awarded for “Outstanding Lead”. The three cast members have to perform one of their songs from the show alongside the other outstanding leads as a medley. Those three cast members and lead roles are included below:

Maralynn Markano, an English, speech, and acting teacher, as well as the Arrowhead Drama Director and Stage Crew Advisor, sent out an email to the cast sharing the awards that the production received along with saying, “I wish we could have been together for this announcement, but we will need to get together VERY SOON to discuss all of the details of the awards ceremonies and the rehearsals we need to have (both here at AHS and some in Madison)…” 

The cast of Les Miserables is going to be preparing “One Day More” to perform for receiving the award of “Outstanding Musical” in the next couple of weeks with working on the song at Arrowhead and rehearsing onstage at the Overture Center. The three actors that got “Outstanding Lead” are also going to have to rehearse a song they sang in the show to perform with the other outstanding lead performers. 

All of the students going to the award ceremony in Madison will be transported on Coach buses from Arrowhead to Madison. Students that are interested in going will need to pay for their own tickets and have to use their own transportation. Tickets can be purchased using this link starting May 27th, 2022. 

From the technical standpoint, all of the awards nominated were the awards that were received. The awards and people who received them are included below:

The award ceremony will take place on June 12th, 2022 at the Overture Center For The Arts in Madison, Wisconsin.