Two BACT Premieres Nominated For 2018 Theatre Bay Area Awards

Two original shows created by Bay Area Children's Theatre (BACT) have been nominated for top honors by Theatre Bay Area, the regional service organization that holds an annual awards ceremony honoring the best work in the Bay Area.

Beautiful Oops!, an original musical about creativity, inspired by award-winning author-Illustrator Barney Saltzberg's joyous book of the same name, and Inside Out and Back Again, an adaptation of award-winning author Thanhha Lai's New York Times bestselling story about a young Vietnamese refugee, have been nominated as Outstanding World Premiere Musical and Outstanding World Premiere Play, respectively.

Each play is one of five finalists in its category (new musical, new play) for the 2018 TBA Awards Celebration, to be held Monday, November 7, at 7 p.m. at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.

"It is a signal honor for BACT to have been recognized by other theatre professionals for both these shows," said BACT Executive Artistic Director Nina Meehan. "Beautiful Oops! allowed us to pull out all the stops-including having the set fall down!-to illustrate that you can turn mistakes into something beautiful. Inside Out and Back Again described the vicissitudes of adjusting to a new life as an immigrant child in the United States. Both shows were specially designed to engage children, in keeping with our mission, but their themes are relevant to us all."

Between them, Beautiful Oops! and Inside Out and Back Again have been nominated for 19 awards, including Outstanding Ensemble in a Play (Inside Out and Back Again), Outstanding Direction of a Musical (Nina Meehan for Beautiful Oops!), Outstanding Direction of a Play (May Liang for Inside Out and Back Again), and Outstanding Production of a Musical (Beautiful Oops!).

BACT's productions of The Night Fairy and Judy Moody & Stink: The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure Hunt have garnered nominations as well, bringing the total number of nominations BACT has received to 22.

((high-res .jpg?format=auto&width=1400s attached of light sequence from Beautiful Oops! and Krystle Piamonte and Benjamin Nguyen in Inside Out and Back Again. Photo credit: Joshua Posamentier))

Established in 2004, Bay Area Children's Theatre, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, serves 125,000 children and adults throughout the Bay Area, with main stage performances in Berkeley, San Francisco and Sunnyvale; programs and productions in local schools; and classes and summer camps in the East Bay, South Bay, and San Francisco.