Apparently, some people think a girl with a blog and an unhealthy addiction to her iPhone social media programs is the best person to entrust with the most TOP SECRET news in Ottawa Theatredom. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, somewhere among the hanging out on movies sets (with Cuba Gooding Jr!), working at the Great Canadian Theatre Company (season launch on Monday!), learning to rap Shakespeare, making women feel beautiful, discovering hidden abilities to translate small documents from English to French, watching some "bloody" good theatre (check out a solid production of Blood Relations at the University of Ottawa before it closes this weekend, as well as the musical Blood Brothers at The Gladstone), working on my own theatre company's project, performing improv with some lovely ladies, and training for a 5K race; somewhere among all that, I became the new anglophone publicist for the upcoming Les Prix Rideau Awards.

(Of course, all of this must have happened after I discovered that necklace from Harry Potter that allows Hermione to attend to classes at the same time, because there is nothing short of wizardry to explain how I manage to do all this stuff...)

After learning that Über Publicist, Crystal Parsons would be leaving the wonderful world of theatre promotion for the civil service, I was approached by the awards committee to see if I could fill her sexy shoes.

My first answer, of course, was no. Re: see above schedule & need for a clone/develop magical powers.

However, after much discussion, I eventually said yes for the following reasons:

The workload isn't as excessive as I first anticipated. There is no need for me to translate documents for these bilingual awards, since there already is a francophone publicist, and I'd be doing a lot of stuff from a social media perspective that I'm doing already.
This could all wait until I was done my stand-in gig.
Being able to say that I'm the publicist for Ottawa's professional theatre awards is a pretty big deal and adds another notch of legitimacy to my marketing belt.
With the GCTC holding a whopping 16 nominations, I can make a lot of what I'll be doing relevant to the day job.
I think the awards are important and I want to support them in some way. This is more than just a big party where people dress up to watch somebody get an award. By recognizing the contribution of theatre professionals in the community, we are raising awareness of our work and acknowledging that there is a a place what we do here in town. My dream? That one day, when I tell someone I am a professional actor, they will not ask me when I will be moving to Montreal or Toronto because it will simply be common knowledge that such a scene exists here as well.

All that to say that I will now be only one of three people to know the award winner's identities before they are revealed on April 18th because I need to have the press release handy for media as soon as the ceremony is over. (Note to self: find dress that coordinates well with handcuffs and a briefcase *insert your own joke here*) And this confidentiality agreement I signed says that no amount of bribing can make me reveal the secrets before then.

But have no fear! You too may know the results as soon as they become available. Tickets are on sale now! Details below (this also reminds me that I will be performing in my first public Sanitas Playback Theatre show that night as well... where the heck is my clone?):

The 3rd Annual Les Prix Rideau Awards celebration is taking place at De La Salle High School (501 Old St Patrick Road, Ottawa) on Sunday, April 18, 2010. The first-ever fully bilingual awards ceremony will be cohosted by CBC Ottawa’s Alan Neal and not-from-CBC-Ottawa's Annie Lefebvre, with theatrical reflections by Sanitas Playback Theatre and music by DJ AL Connors.

Tickets are $25 each and may be purchased through the Nouvelle Scène box office:

online at nouvellescene.com
by telephone at 613-241-2727 ext 1
in person at 333 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa

Les Prix Rideau Awards III -- Sunday, April 18, 2010 De La Salle High School, 501 Old St Patrick Road, Ottawa Doors open at 6:30 PM; presentation begins at 7:30 PM - Tickets: $25