Fossil Ridge High musical nominated for best overall production, 5 other Bobby G Awards

Best lead actress, best lead actor, best overall production.

Fossil Ridge High School’s spring musical, "Bright Star," is in the running for the three most prestigious honors and three other awards Thursday night at the annual Bobby G Awards in Denver.

Only two other musicals in the state, Lakewood’s “Something Rotten” and ThunderRidge’s “The Addams Family” received more nominations for the 2023 Colorado high school version of Broadway’s Tony Awards.

Winners will be announced Thursday night during a Tony Awards-style show, with its own red-carpet entrance at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

“We made a killer show; it was so awesome,” best lead actor nominee Cooper Hand said.

Fossil Ridge performed “Bright Star,” a 2014 musical written by famed comedian and banjo player Steve Martin and popular singer Edie Brickell, for its annual spring production last month. It’s a story set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in the 1920s and 1940s and features bluegrass music from and inspired by Martin and Brickell’s 2013 Grammy-winning album “Love Has Come For You.”

The emotional storyline and unique musical style helped the production stand out among the 50 high school musicals in the state that were up for consideration, cast and orchestra members said in an interview with the Coloradoan after school Tuesday.

But the show’s success — evidenced by the six nominations it received from a panel of judges of working theater artists and educators, including four who attended one of the performances in person — runs much deeper.

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“Every single person that was cast in this show was perfect for that specific role,” said faculty director Mikayla Assmus, an English and theater teacher. “There wasn’t a single person that was kind of teetering; everyone was perfectly cast for that specific character.

“Then on the tech side, everybody just pulled their weight and went above and beyond to create the image that we wanted.”

The Fossil Ridge production is one of five in the running for best overall production, an award that has gone to eight different schools in the eight years of the Bobby G Awards, launched in 2013 in honor of late producer Robert Garner, who established Denver as a top destination for touring Broadway shows, the DCPA said in a news release. Also up for the top honor this year are Lakewood, ThunderRidge, Grand Junction Central for “Newsies” and Overland for “Urinetown.”

All five of the nominees will perform a number from their shows during the awards ceremony Thursday night, with Fossil Ridge choosing an all-cast performance of its opening song, “If You Knew My Story.”

Best lead actress nominee Camille Nugent, who played Murphy, and Hand, who played Billy Cane, will also perform at the awards ceremony with the eight other nominees for outstanding actor and actress.

The winners of those two awards will receive an expense-paid trip to New York City for the National High School Theatre Awards, also known as the Jimmys, on June 27 at Minskoff Theatre, where they will participate in a 10-day series of classes and workshops with Broadway actors, directors and designers leading up to the awards show, according to DCPA news releases.

Hand’s older brother, Austin, won the best lead actor award and trip to New York City in 2017 for his portrayal of Gomez in “The Addams Family.” Fossil Ridge’s only other nominations for Bobby G Awards were in 2018, when “Big Fish” received nominations for best overall production, actress, actor, lighting and costumes, according to a news release prepared for the school.

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Fossil Ridge’s other nominees this year for Bobby G Awards are for outstanding performance by an orchestra; Bri McCormick and Nate Wambolt for outstanding achievement in musical direction; and Lucas Bean and Jemma Wayne for outstanding achievement in lighting design. More than 100 students were involved in the production.

McCormick said the musicians “really stuck to the original intent of the composers” in the bluegrass genre. A former student returned to play the banjo, and the other eight members of the orchestra performed on a platform 9 to 10 feet above the stage rather than in the traditional orchestra pit and interacted with the actors and actresses in some scenes.

“When I heard the music for this, I knew I was going to enjoy it automatically,” cello player Liam Corder said. “It was a lot of fun. There wasn’t really a boring song in the whole musical.”

Bean and Wayne believe their use of projections on characters from above, particularly in one scene mimicking backgrounds of varying light mimicking the window of a moving train, helped their work stand out.

“We hyper-fixated on the details,” Wayne said.

Fossil Ridge held tryouts for “Bright Star” in December, just before the winter break, allowing everyone to learn their music and parts before the group came together to prepare in early January. They worked with an accent coach to achieve authentic voices, Nugent said, as well as with music teachers, student choreographers, makeup artists, costume designers and musical directors to prepare for their performances over two weekends in April.

Although students received class credit for the production, practices were held outside of school hours. Three hours a night on weekdays, with some all-day Saturday sessions, as well.

The friendships and bonds they built spending all that time together is evident in the final product, Cooper Hand said. Actors and actresses knew each other and the characters they were portraying well enough to work little nuances into their scenes that took the story to another level.

“Those were the best pieces of it,” Nugent said. “I think that connection was so valuable, especially with the gravity and intensity of the story we were trying to tell. A lot of high school musicals, you’ll only see go so deep into human emotions and these kind of dynamics that are trickier to portray. And I think, at least personally, this character goes through so much and we share that with the audience. There is so much that happens that is absolutely ecstatic joy and then intense grief, and you kind of go on this journey.”

5 Fort Collins, Loveland, Windsor schools nominated for Bobby G's

• Fossil Ridge's production of "Bright Star" is nominated for six awards – best lead actress (Camille Nugent), best lead actor (Cooper Hand), best overall production, outstanding performance by an orchestra, outstanding achievement in musical direction (Bri McCormick and Nate Wambolt) and outstanding achievement in lighting design (Lucas Bean and Jemma Wayne).

• Windsor’s production of “Chicago Teen Edition” is up for three awards – musical direction (Jerrod Griebel, Meghan Munoz and Amy Murphy), choreography (Candace Martinez, Susan Wildman, Mia Walters and Joy Perry Grice) and outstanding performance by a chorus.

• Mountain View’s production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” was also nominated for three Bobby G’s – hair and makeup design (Holley Winbourn), lighting design (Ella Neisler, Kajsa Oresjo and Iralynn Thompson) and performance by an orchestra.

• Poudre’s Suzie Matlock was nominated for best performance in a supporting role for her portrayal of Lavender in “Matilda The Musical.”

• Fort Collins was nominated for outstanding performance by an orchestra for its production of "SpongeBob The Musical."

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fossil Ridge High School musical nominated for 6 Bobby G Awards