Categories

Examples...

...from the final Arena Awards and the reasons for their awardedness are below.

VOTES NEEDED!
Please email me your nominations, through hello@rare-gravy.co.uk or through my usual email address....

Best Newcomer

Winner: Paul Nelson
For getting involved in all sorts of things from a standing start and quickly becoming indispensable. And for shouting a lot. Mainly for the shouting.

Best Supporting Role

Winner: Suzanne Wallace-Abbot
For sterling work (and stealing the show) as stage crew for Ladies' Day, by displaying a hitherto-undreamt of talent for rolling up large astroturf carpets representing Ascot's hallowed turf at the speed of light.

Best Use of Costume, Facial or Cranial Hair

Winner: Adam Donoghue
For investing around £100 of the budget for Popcorn in really cool SWAT team outfits and realistic replica police carbines for himself and two others, to be worn when the police storm the house at the end of the show and take out Wayne and Scout Hudson in a blaze of glory...only, the lighting was too dark and no-one could see a thing. Literally. Nothing. They may as well have been wearing Optimus Prime t-shirts, Hawaiian skirts and high heels. Which, in fairness, was the next option.

Persistence in the Face of Adversity

Winner: The cast of Popcorn
For rehearsing twice weekly in the depths of winter in a small, unheated room at the abandoned Sopley camp. With broken windows. In the coldest winter since records began. Seriously, brrr. Frankly, we're amazed no-one sued for hypothermia-related illness and/or nervous breakdown.

Best Performance in a Foreign Language

Winner: Tim Wallace-Abbot.
For his quite brilliant, and somewhat alarming, Adolf Hitler impression in the HCP's Happy as a Sandbag. The words were, apparently, German, although only Tim knows for sure. Additional bonus points for a quick costume change featuring his forgetting to remove the 'tache...

Excellence in Choreography or Dance

Winner: Rachael Towler (now Cheeseman)
For not only doing a striptease live on stage, in order to prove that "pantyhose" are, gusset notwithstanding, just as sexy as stockings. And for bravely practicing this striptease in the aforementioned draughty and unheated rehearsal room at Sopley.

Best Musical Achievement

Winner: Gary Hayton
For producing a soundtrack of rhinoceros bellows, marching feet, and squished cats to the exacting orders of the director, and making it into a truly quadrophonic, menacing soundscape that added so much to the atmosphere of Rhinoceros. And for putting up with the Regent Studio sound board and his laptop failing not once, but twice.

Old Ham Award for Inspired Creativity in a Minor Role

Winner: Daniel Stanton-Wright
For his brief but memorable cameo in Popcorn as the cameraman clad only in vest and boxer shorts, whose plaintive, voice-not-yet-quite-broken calls of "Um...Mr Hudson?" got the biggest laughs of the night.

NB: This award was officially renamed the year before as the Suzanne Wallace-Abbot Old Ham Award for Inspired Creativity in a Minor Role, as she had won it on so many previous occasions - two of which were for exactly the same thing several years apart. She retains the commemorative coathanger. So, kids, just like winning the World Cup enough times, you too can have an Earlobe award named after you...

Most Romantic Moment

Winner: Pete Griffiths and Lindsay Edwards
For their, quite frankly, disturbing rendition of Wayne and Scout Hudson shagging on the sofa in Popcorn. And for Pete getting his top off.

Most Memorable Verbal Offering

Winner: Justin Bikram
For his complete inability to pronounce the word "Asiatic". A bit of a problem where the difference between African and Asiatic rhinoceroses features heavily in the dialogue of the production.

This is always a hotly contested category, as you can imagine. Previously, Pauline won for two years on the trot, and was heading for an unprecedented consecutive hat-trick, only to be pipped by Justin. Her previous winning entries were "What angel wakes me from my floury bread?" (delivered, obviously, on the night the show was videoed), and "I'm going to lick Tim's helmet"...

Most Exciting Moment

Winner: Pete Beebee
For surviving an horrendous crash in his fruit and veg van on the Upton bypass, where the vehicle crashed, rolled, rolled, and rolled some more, ending up in a ditch. All this, a week before opening night of Rhinoceros. He wouldn't countenance dropping out and in performance he excelled, despite being on massive painkillers and suffering from serious whiplash. Not only that, but injured as he was, he was the only cast member to turn up to the get-back-in-again at Sopley after the show.

Special Award

Winner: Linda Kirkman
For all of her amazing work in setting up Scene One, giving support and a voice to the amateur dramatic community in our area for many years and all for the love of it.

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