The Freddy Awards

The Freddy Awards, also known as the Freddys, are an annual recognition of outstanding high school theatre in the Lehigh Valley area, including the Northampton County and Lehigh County in Pennsylvania, and Warren County in New Jersey. The awards were created in 2003 and are awarded each year during a ceremony at the State Theatre in Easton, Pennsylvania, and are broadcast live on WFMZ Channel 69.

The 2004 broadcast of the Freddy Awards won an Emmy Award, and other broadcasts have won awards from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters and the Associated Press Awards. The 2008 ceremony will be the subject of a documentary being produced by the Los Angeles-based Canyonback Films, expected to be released in 2009.

History

The Freddy Awards were named after J. "Fred" Osterstock, who managed the State Theatre in Easton, Pennsylvania from 1936 until his death in 1957. Osterstock lived in the theater temporarily after a flood damaged his house and, according to local lore, his ghost still haunts the theater. State Theatre announced the creation of the Freddy Awards on April 2, 2002 to recognize outstanding high school theatre in the Lehigh Valley area, with the awards themselves distributed at a ceremony at the State Theatre. Shelley Brown, the theater's president and executive director of the Freddy Awards, said she hoped the awards would highlight and reward the local performing arts, which she said are often overlooked in favor of athletic and academic achievements; Brown said, "We want this to be in the trophy case with the basketball championship trophy. ... Hopefully, this will raise the bar for schools and we'll get increasingly better performances." A total of 22 categories were established in the first year, including best MusicAL, best actor and actress, best supporting actor and actress, best performance by an orchestra, best duet performance, best choreography, best lighting and best costume deign.

All high schools in Northampton County and Lehigh County in Pennsylvania, as well as Warren County in New Jersey, are eligible for the Freddy Awards. In the first year, letters were mailed to each of the eligible high schools, and the first 35 to return the applications were able to participate. Each year, a committee of judges are established from members of the theater's board of directors, volunteers and theater professionals from throughout the three participating. A minimum of six evaluators see each show, and the judges meet to review videotapes of the plays and select the award recipients.

Ceremony

The first ceremony was held at the State Theatre on May 22, 2003. The event was modeled after the Tony Awards, the ceremony which honors Broadway productions and performances. The first ceremony was hosted by Ken Matthews, a broadcaster with B104, an Allentown-based station serving the Lehigh Valley region. From 2004 to date, the shows have been hosted by Shelley Brown and Ed Hanna, of WFMZ. The three-hour ceremony was televised live on WFMZ Channel 69, a local television station which served as a sponsor and partner with the Freddy Awards. The second ceremony was broadcast on May 27, 2004, and was once again broadcast live by WFMZ. The 2004 broadcast won a regional Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award in the performing arts category in 2005, marking the first ever Emmy win for WFMZ. The ceremony has since received two additional Emmy nominations, and won five Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters awards and an Associated Press Award for Public Affairs. The fifth annual ceremony aired on May 23, 2007, was streamed live on the WFMZ website for the first time, and the nominations announcements were also streamed on the site the following year.

Documentary

The night before the May 2007 broadcast of the Freddy Awards, Matt Kallis of the Los Angeles-based company Canyonback Films found a clip from a previous ceremony on the video-sharing website YouTube while searching on the Internet for a music-based project to create a documentary. Kallis and his filmmaking partner Christopher Lockhart watched the live online broadcast on May 23, 2007, and decided to make a documentary AbOUT the Freddy Awards. A film crew from Canyonback Films visited the Lehigh Valley in early 2008 and began filming behind-the-scenes footage of production meetings and rehearsals at participating high schools, the announcement of the nominations and visits wit the performers' families. In addition to filming the actual ceremony, Kallis also distributed high-definition handheld cameras to students to film additional footage. Kellis said, "Hopefully we'll be able to tell some stories that really reflect universality, and kids all around the country will be able to see themselves in these stories." Shelley Brown said she had "complete faith" that the documentary would be "a fair representation" of the Freddy process. The documentary is expected to be released sometime in 2009.

Recipients

2009 Freddy Award winners

External links

• The Freddy Awards (official site)
• Latest Freddy Awards news, photos and videos from The Express-Times