Yesterday saw two of the most significant award ceremonies across the theatre industry take place – The Offies along with the WhatsOnStage Awards. Both awards celebrate the diverse and eclectic talent that makes up the lifeblood of the sector – and both were sponsored by White Light.

Organised by OffWestEnd, The Offies were created to recognise excellence, innovation and ingenuity in independent, alternative and fringe theatre in London. This year marked the 13th annual ceremony and took place at Alexandra Palace Theatre. WL was one of the main sponsors once again, signifying its continued commitment to theatre of all scales. Two representatives of the company, Ally DeCourcy and Sam Knight, were in attendance and presented the awards for Best Lighting Design and Best Video Design; which were won by Aaron J Dootson for The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me and Douglas Baker for 10 Days in a Madhouse respectively.

Other winners on the evening included The Solid Life of Sugar Water at Orange Tree Theatre which was crowned Best Production, Operation Mincemeat at the Southwark Playhouse which won Best Musical, Rebecca Humphries who took home Best Lead Performance for Blackout Songs at Hampstead Theatre, Douglas Baker who received Best Video Design for Ten Days in a Madhouse at Jack Studio Theatre, Calum Perrin who won Best Sound Design for Ten Days in a Madhouse at Jack Studio Theatre and Grace Smart whose work on The Wonderful World of Dissocia at Theatre Royal Stratford East Theatre saw her take home Best Set Design. You can read the full list of winners here.

Following The Offies, across town at The Prince of Wales Theatre, the WhatsOnStage Awards then took place. The WhatsOnStage Awards are the only major theatre awards nominated and voted for by the public, with thousands of theatregoers up and down the country deciding their favourite performers and shows across a range of categories. Winners across the evening included Jodie Comer who took home Best Performer in a Play, Bonnie and Clyde which won Best New Musical, Oklahoma! which won Best Musical Revival and Billy Elliot which won Best Regional Production – all of which featured lighting equipment supplied by WL. You can read the full list of winners here.

The biggest winner of the night was the RSC’s beloved stage adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro, which secured several awards, including Best Direction (for Phelim McDermott), Best Set Design (for Tom Pye and Basil Twist), Best Sound Design (for Tony Gayle) and Best Musical Direction/Supervision (for Bruce O’Neil and Matt Smith). It also took home Best Lighting Design, for Jessica Hung Han Yun; an award that WL was proudly sponsoring once again. In fact, due to Jessica unfortunately being unable to attend last night, WL’s very own Stuart Porter collected the award on her behalf!

Stuart comments: “Both The Offies and WhatsOnStage Awards are fantastic celebrations of the sheer breadth of incredible theatre we’ve seen take place over the past year. It was particularly inspiring to see Jessica receive her well-deserved recognition at WhatsOnStage – after previously winning Best Lighting Design at the 2019 Offies. We actually supplied the lighting fixtures for My Neighbour Totoro (as well as on Equus for which she won the OffWestEnd Award!) so to see her career progress and flourish is genuinely inspiring. As a company, to play a role in both award ceremonies is really important to us as we have always been proud to support theatre at all levels and scales; something we will continue to do”.

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