BWW Blog: Ben Helzner - Optimism at the Greater Philly Cappies

At the 11th Annual Greater Philly Cappies, a student review-based mini-Tony awards for high schools in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, my school got more than 14 nominations including one for Best Musical! We were ecstatic when we heard, and immediately began preparing our presentation (after every few awards, a performance is done by a nominee for Best Musical, Play, or Song). Our show was The Little Mermaid, so we decided to the iconic number "Under the Sea" as our song. Unfortunately, much of our cast could not make it to the Cappies, so the people on stage for the song was cut dramatically. The amount of boys on stage was halved, and the population of girls didn't fare much better.

But when the Cappies finally came, our cast was as ready as it could be. As we sat down in our seats and watched as the ceremony began, we could barely contain our excitement. The lights dimmed and we heard the opening bars to "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee". Cappies Student Critics, Vannas, and Administrators proceeded to perform a charming parody of the song, replacing the titular line with "The 11th Annual Greater Philly Cappies" before moving into the awards.

This was my first Cappies Convention, so I had no idea what to expect with the performances, but every single one of them was extremely well-done! A highlight for me was one school's rendition of "Agony" from Into the Words, a hammed-up song of two love-seekers attempted to prove to each other that their sadness is much more important than the others'. Both singers played their parts fabulously and their comedy was excellent. Every performance was done extremely well and my school's performance was no exception! As jittery as I was waiting for my school's allotted time to shine, it affect me onstage at all! Our Sebastian sounded great and we all danced some of the best we had in a long while. After our performance we went back down to our seats, nerves considerably lessened, and watched the rest of the ceremony play out.

As the nominations came and went, and as we had a great time with our number, when the day ended we realized something: our school had not won a single award, but we didn't care! The fact that we got nominated was enough to show we made a good show, and just the experience was enough to make it memorable. We didn't need a trophy to show our victory, the truth was in our hearts. And isn't that a perfectly sappy lesson to learn at festival for theatre?