COLUMBUS, Ohio — The CAPA Marquee Awards honors the best in high school musical theatre from all around central Ohio.
Awards in 13 different performance and technical categories will be handed out. The Best Male and Best Female performance honorees will go on to the national Jimmy Awards in New York City to perform on Broadway with students from all around the country.
Locally, the CAPA Marquee Awards showcases itself as a major production that takes nearly a whole year to plan and produce.
CAPA Director of Education and Engagement Amy Handra serves as the director for the Marquee Awards showcase and is astounded by the professionalism of the students every year.
"The energy and the enthusiasm of these young people is just unparalleled," said Handra. "I oftentimes tell people that it really does remind me of why I was a theatre kid and why I loved theatre so much."
The 2024 Marquee Awards will feature around 215 students both onstage performing and backstage as part of the crew. This year, 22 central Ohio schools - more than any previous year - are participating in the showcase.
While Handra and her fellow CAPA members have been working on the production essentially since the curtains closed on last year's event, the students only have around two weeks to learn the songs and the complex choreography designed for the showcase.
"It's been such a great time," said Lucy Robinson, who just finished her sophomore year at Bexley High School and is participating in the showcase for the first time. "I have made so many friends and everyone's just been so kind."
Robinson stated that she is looking forward to performing on the Ohio Theatre stage, a sentiment echoed by recent Eastmoor Academy graduate Tylen Gordon who has appeared all four years of his high school career.
"Not a lot of people get to say, 'I've performed on the Ohio Theatre stage,'" said Gordon, "...and we're next up."
Honoring students' achievements in music theatre is important, but, for Handra, helping students connect and build a community is one of the key elements of the Marquee Awards.
"Getting to participate in the showcase, the students get to meet all of these other people who also share the same passions and have the same love for musical theatre that they do," said Handra. "It creates a unique opportunity and creates a community for our young people that many of them, I think, really need. You know, in central Ohio we love our sports, but we don't oftentimes give the arts the same level of recognition and the same appreciation for the hard work that these young people are putting into their passions."
For Handra, the arts are an integral part of a student's education.
"Students and children that are exposed to the arts grow in empathy, they grow in their communication with each other and with others," she explained. "Arts opportunities make our communities better because they provide something that enriches our lives; they make us better humans which, I think, is oftentimes understated. But they truly do make us...better people."
"These last four years, CAPA has had probably one of -- if not the biggest influences in why theatre has meant so much to me," said Gordon. "Believe it or not, I'm actually more of a kind of introverted, shy kind of person unless I'm around a lot of people that I know. Theatre has always been one place for me where I can be myself confidently and not have to worry about who's judging or who's watching because it's always been that judgment-free zone, in a sense."
And for first-timer Robinson, she credited the CAPA Marquee Awards for bringing her out of her comfort zone.
"This opportunity has kind of instilled in me that this is what I want to do," said Robinson. "It's truly inspiring."
The CAPA Marquee Awards take the stage of the Ohio Theatre on Thursday, June 6 at 7:30 p.m. For more information on the event and to purchase tickets, click here.