Lest Thou Be Judged Of what value is a Memphis Theatre Award if everyone gets one? by CHRIS DAVIS ear the end of his twisted fable The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare writes, "Go together, you precious winners all." Though the Bard's words can be (and certainly have been) interpreted any number of ways, the play's theme of violent jealousy, coupled with its highly unrealistic "fantasy" ending, imbues the closing line with more than a touch of unmalleable irony. It is an irony surely lost on those who set policy for the Memphis Theatre Awards. There was no listing of nominees, or envelopes to open, at this year's awards (haven't been for years). There was only Memphis magazine editor Richard Banks and local actor Gene Katz announcing "in this category there will be three awards." This kinder, gentler version of the theatre awards (in the old days only one prize was awarded per category) was designed to make "winners all" of the mostly volunteer Memphis theatre community. Though conceived with naught but the best of intentions, the decision to present multiple awards was a terrible mistake. You see, when an award is made common, its value becomes dubious, and the enthusiasm with which it is received wanes. The casual attire of the crowd gathered at Rhodes College's Bryan Campus Life Center spoke volumes. There was a time when the ceremony was a cause to get gussied up, and whether elegant or outrageous, each person in attendance sought to outdo everyone else. It was an event. I'm certainly no fashion hound, but there is no doubt that the lack of sartorial competition says (to me at least) that the theatre awards just aren't that big of a deal, and my discussion of the issue with several attendees confirmed my suspicions. One of our community's more active thespians, who asked that his name not be mentioned, made this comment: "When I won a few years ago, I shared the award with two of the city's best. It would have been a huge honor just to have been nominated with those guys and to have lost to one of them. I grew up with siblings -- I don't like to share anything." A note to the Memphis Arts Council: Art should be meaningful, and so should awards. In the college division, this year's crop of judges could not have been more astute. Other than the category of lighting design, which absolutely should have gone to The 5th of July, each award was more than deserved. Some of the awards in the community division, however, made little sense at all. Sean Paul Brian (whose work in Picasso at the Lapin Agile and You Can't Take It With You was nothing short of superb) was honored with a best actor award for his hollow and extremely misguided performance as the disturbed Alan Strang in Circuit's god-awful Equus, while Raymond Neal (awe-inspiring in Day of Absence) and Jim Ostrander (glorious in You Can't Take It With You) were ignored. I am always happy to see M. Michele Somers receive any recognition for her generally excellent work, and had she earned her best actress award for You Can't Take It With You, I would have jumped for joy. That she walked away with gold for her grating one-note rant in The Last Night of Ballyhoo is baffling. While these complaints may be dismissed as matters of personal taste, there is one award which was out-and-out wrongheaded. Artist Christopher Rico was honored for the masks he designed for the horses in Equus. There is no question that his design and craftsmanship deserve praise, but the simple fact is, the hideous skulls he created were damaging to Peter Shaffer's script, in which the horses represent beauty, freedom, strength, and sexual potency. These are not qualities that can be found in images of death and decay, and to award such foolishness is harmful to our creative community. The Eugart Yerian Award for Lifetime Achievement went posthumously to Tony Lee Garner, who died of cancer in 1998. Garner served for years as the musical director at Theatre Memphis, and as the head of the theatre and music departments at Rhodes College. He was an artist never satisfied with mere adequacy; he looked upon every achievement as a challenge to achieve more and to achieve better. Though I have used the following quote from Garner in a previous column, it would be wrong for me not to repeat it here, in honor of a man whose amazing talents, indefatigable enthusiasm for learning, and standard of excellence touched and changed the lives of so very many people: "If you make no effort to fathom what you are doing, put away any claims of being made in God's image, and forgo the hope of ever understanding the timeless." Rather than ending on such a somber note allow me to repeat another piece of wisdom which Garner once shared with me. "Ya' know, Chris," he remarked, "a smart fella once said that awards are like hemorrhoids -- sooner or later every asshole gets one."