More Jeff award news

After three decades of playing nice, we no longer have to pretend that we’re all winners.

The Joseph Jefferson committee announced today that the recently controversial non-Equity Jeff Award (known prior to this season as the Jeff Citation) will become a competitive award beginning next year.

The prize, given to non-union Chicago theater, is supposed to be the Tony Awards of the city’s famously scrappy off-Loop theater scene. But because of the Mensa-level incomprehensible math by which the winners are determined (the system formerly weighed the percentage of committee members who saw the show against the number of votes it received, and possibly factored in your credit score), there are very often multiple recipients in each category.

Under the old system, it was possible for a category to have, say, six nominees and no less than three winners. In addition to diminishing the value of the award—it’s like winning one third of a prize—it made the non-recipients in the multiple-winner categories seem like even bigger losers. i.e. How bad did your work have to be not even to score in the top three? (It almost makes going without a nomination seem preferable.)

But the elimination of the Special-Olympics-style everybody-gets-a-medal system, part of the ongoing Jeff makeover which began with a brand survey, is going to add a new professionalism to the non-Equity Jeff.

Now if we could only figure out a way to pay these people worthy of a professional prize in actual professional dollars.