The winners include Kevin Stannet - Best Lighting Designer for Nataniel's After Animals, who wins a trip to Prague and a visit to the Robe factory thanks to Robe and DWR.
Executive director, and creative director for the event, Dawn Lindberg, said of this year's awards, "The standard of excellence gets higher and higher each year, making the judges' job of selecting winners almost tortuous. All the nominees are winners in our eyes." The panel sees over 70 productions each year, with over 300 nominees on the list of excellence.
"The process of seeing, analysing and assessing all professional productions staged in Gauteng during each year is a full time job which is not always acknowledged," Lindberg continues. "Lack of sufficient financial support from Government and commercial sponsors is a constant battle, but Naledi is proud to be internationally recognised as the bench mark of excellence in SA live theatre."
"All my creative knowledge and grounding has come from theatre, so I always want to give back where I can," said Robert Hoey from Dream Sets. "Des and Dawn Lindberg are also a big motivation for me, I love working with passionate people and these two are incredible."
The lighting rig consisted of 12 Robe BMFL Spots, six Philips Vari-Lite VL4000 Spots, six Philips Vari-Lite VL4000 BeamWash, 12 Martin MAC Quantum Spots, 22 Robe ColorWash 700E AT, six Robe ColorSpot 700E AT, MDG Haze and programming on a grandMA2 Light.
The Naledi Theatre Awards have been in existence for 12 years. Its mission is to recognise and reward excellence in the performing arts, to raise the profile of live theatre and to create awareness of the abundant talent alive and well on SA stages.
Sponsorship in kind is received from the Lyric Theatre at Gold Reef City, Tsogo Sun, Distell, The Johannesburg Youth Orchestra (JYO), MJ Event Gear, Gearhouse Splitbeam, AVIS and Stiki corporate gifts.
Category sponsors include: The Market Theatre (Emerging Voice), The SA State Theatre (Best New SA Script), Robe Lighting (Best lighting design) and DWR Distribution (Best Sound design), Dreamsets (Best Set design), Carolyn Steyn (Best Production of a Musical), and Percy Tucker (Best Director).
(Jim Evans)
