North Hills grad, Kirsten Hoover, takes 2nd in national theater contest
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Competing in the National High School Musical Theater Awards at Broadway's Minskoff Theatre were, from left, Kelly Award winners Luke Halferty of Bloomfield and Kirsten Hoover of Ross, and Mancini Awards winners Bethany Angelica Menjivar of Ambridge and John Michael Taormina of Center.
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NEW YORK -- Monday night, in a glittering performance and awards show before some 1,400 at Broadway's Minskoff Theatre, which normally hosts "The Lion King," Kirsten Hoover of Ross came in runner-up in the National High School Musical Theater Awards. The annual competition is among 50 high school students who win local finals in 25 regions nationwide; for Ms. Hoover, that had been Pittsburgh's Gene Kelly Awards.
After all 50 spent four days of intensive coaching and a final day rehearsing on the big Broadway stage, the excitement was intensified by a bomb scare in adjacent Times Square, which kept the audience from entering and delayed the show. But after a half-hour, everything went on as planned, allowing informally dressed emcee Gregory Jbara of "Billy Elliot" to crack, "Sorry I'm late, but I left my tux in a suitcase somewhere out in Times Square."
Following a big opening number involving all 50, the first half of the show was devoted to "medleys" of five to 10 performers doing brief excerpts from their prize-winning performances. This allowed two Curlys from "Oklahoma!" to face off, four Tevyes from "Fiddler on the Roof" to share visions of the joys of riches and five thoroughly modern Millies, all in varieties of red, to interweave two songs from that show.
Among celebrity presenters were Aaron Tveit, Nikki M. James (Tony winner for "The Book of Mormon"), Tommy Tune and Harvey Fierstein.
The top prize among the 25 girls went to Shauni Ruetz of Rochester, N.Y. Additional runner-up with Ms. Hoover was Breyannah Tillman of Memphis, Tenn. The top prize among the 25 boys went to Ryan McCartan of Minneapolis, Minn., with Seth Jones of Kansas City, Mo., and Mackenzie Orr of Irving, Texas, as runners-up. The two winners won four-year scholarships to study theater at New York University (provisional on their meeting admission requirements) plus $10,000 each toward college expenses. The four runners-up won $2,5000 each.
Named the Jimmy Awards after James M. Nederlander, elderly chairman of a large chain of theaters on Broadway and across the country, the Jimmies are modeled on the Gene Kelly Awards, devised and run for 21 years by Pittsburgh CLO. A collaboration between the CLO and the Nederlander Organization took the awards national in 2009.
A new graduate of North Hills High School, Ms. Hoover qualified for the national finals by winning this year's Kelly Award as best actress. The best actor Kelly Award winner who competed in New York was Luke Halferty of Bloomfield, a new graduate of Central Catholic High School.
First Published June 29, 2011 12:00 am
