Porchlight Music Theatre Announces Jim Corti As Winner of the 2022 Guy Adkins Award

Porchlight Music Theatre is proud to announce Jim Corti as the recipient of the 2022 Guy Adkins Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Music Theatre. The award will be presented during this year's annual Chicago Sings fundraising concert, Chicago Sings Stephen Sondheim, Monday, May 23, at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), 220 E. Chicago Ave. This year's Chicago Sings concert offers two opportunities to experience Chicago's music theatre and cabaret performers saluting Stephen Sondheim.

The first is "It's a Hit" Live Experience, for $150 per ticket, with benefits including a reserved seat in the Edlis Neeson Theater for the performance and pre-concert reception, and the "Color & Light" Lounge Experience, for $50 per ticket, hosted by the Porchlight Young Professionals, which includes a stream of the performance in a lively lounge created on the second floor of the museum. Tickets for both experiences are available now at PorchlightMusicTheatre.org.

Chicago Sings Stephen Sondheim will be a fundraising celebration of the life and art of the great composer and lyricist who changed the world of American music theatre with performances directed by Porchlight Music Theatre Artistic Director Michael Weber with music direction by David Fiorello and the presentation of the Guy Adkins Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Music Theatre in Chicago.

This year, Paramount Theatre's Artistic Director Jim Corti is the recipient of the Guy Adkins Award for his exceptional and lasting contribution to the state of the art of Chicago music theatre. Past Guy Adkins Award recipients include Felicia P. Fields, currently starring in Porchlight's Blues in the Night through March 20, director/choreographers Brenda Didier and Rachel Rockwell, actors E. Faye Butler, Paula Scrofano and Hollis Resnik, music director/conductor Doug Peck and directors Gary Griffin, Dominic Missimi and L. Walter Stearns. The committee that chooses the annual award winner is composed of past recipients and other leaders in Chicago's music theatre industry.

ABOUT Jim Corti, 2022 Guy Adkins AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE ADVANCEMENT OF MUSIC THEATRE IN CHICAGO RECIPIENT

Jim Corti is Paramount Theatre's artistic director and inaugurated Paramount's Broadway Series with President and CEO Tim Rater in fall 2011 with their critically acclaimed production of My Fair Lady and a subscriber base of 12,500 patrons. In 2015, Paramount's Broadway Series became Jeff Award eligible. Since then, Paramount has garnered 68 nominations with 19 wins, including three consecutive Best Large Musical awards for Les Misérables, West Side Story and Sweeney Todd. Corti helmed all three, and won Best Director for two of them, Les Misérables and Sweeney Todd. Prior to the pandemic, Paramount subscriptions had risen above 41,000 with a record- breaking 350,000 patrons in attendance in 2019.

He also directed Paramount's Fiddler on the Roof, Miss Saigon, Rent, The Who's Tommy, Oklahoma!, Mamma Mia!, Million Dollar Quartet, Once, The Producers (Jeff for Best Director), Newsies and Groundhog Day: The Musical. A Broadway veteran, he appeared in the original New York casts of Ragtime and Candide, joined the long running A Chorus Line and toured nationally in Urinetown, Cabaret and Bob Fosse's Dancin'.

Other highlights include being the only director to have two productions in the same year in the Chicago Tribune's list of 10 Best Shows for Drury Lane's Cabaret and Writers Theatre's Oh, Coward! in 2009. He remains the sole honoree to have won Jeff Awards as an actor (Marriott's Grand Hotel), choreographer (Drury Lane's Singin' in the Rain) and director (Paramount's The Producers, Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables, Drury Lane's Sweet Charity and Northlight Theater's Blues in the Night).