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Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

CATs board to close awards after 25 years

Happier days for the CATs. Then Deputy Premier and Minister for the Arts Troy Grant, CATs founder Coralie Wood, CATs chair Dennis Martin and John Barilaro, at a CAT event in 2014.

After 25 years of razzmatazz, the CAT Awards are to close, says arts editor HELEN MUSA. 

In a message mooted by chair Dennis Martin during the online CATs announcements of April 18 and now circulated to 25 Canberra theatre companies, a meeting has been proposed to discuss whether to continue with an awards program and in what way.

But the “CAT Awards“ operates as a registered company under the Corporations Act 2001 and, the board has decided, will be wound up by June 30.

According to CAT Award spokesperson and a member of its judging panel, Ian Mclean, schools have not been included in the message, to prevent any initial meeting being overcrowded, nor have regional companies, so that Canberra interest could be gauged first, but either way, the closure would go ahead.

Founded by publicist Coralie Wood and performer-entrepreneur Kate Peters in 1994, the then “Canberra Area Theatre Awards” for amateur theatre quickly became a part of the theatre, dance, school, cabaret and musical theatre scene in Canberra and surrounding districts, self-funded on a fee-for-inclusion basis but never receiving ACT government funding.

John Barilaro with the Catmobile, supplied by Suzuki Australia and National Capital Motors.

Quickly embraced by school theatre groups and companies in the immediate region, the awards flourished, then rapidly expanded to take in districts as distant as Dubbo and Merimbula. Busloads of fans descended on Canberra each year for the glitzy mini-Oscars ceremony at venues including the Playhouse, Llewellyn Hall, the Canberra Theatre and once only in 2017, Dubbo Regional Theatre and Convention Centre.

A rotating panel of judges roamed the regions, an expensive enterprise eventually supported by the NSW government through Deputy Premier, Minister for Regional New South Wales, Industry and Trade and member for Monaro John Barilaro, who in 2017 announced that the government would grant the Canberra Area Theatre Awards $100,000 over four years.

But the complexities of running a state-wide enterprise with equity for groups both in and out of Canberra, complaints about the cost of entry and controversy over the suitability of judges saw dramatic drop in Canberra membership, resulting in a very narrow range of awardees in the April 18 online announcements.

Reactions have been coming from local companies to the board thick and fast, with some keen to keep the awards going but others putting forward alternative suggestions for restructuring, renaming and refinancing.

As for “CAT Mother” Coralie Wood, who was recently honoured with a “Diamond CAT” award by the board, she’s hopeful of an eleventh-hour rescue that now seems unlikely.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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