2014 True West Award: Norrell Moore

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TRUE WEST AWARDS: 30 DAYS, 30 AWARDS

True_West_Award_300.Even when she walked on stage as buttoned-up law student Vivienne Kensington in the Arvada Center’s “Legally Blonde” in 2012, Norrell Moore exuded a  star power that was so obvious, it threatened to pop the buttons right off Viv’s three-piece suit. We saw it grow when she then played First Lady Rachel Jackson as a comically daft goth cutter in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson for Ben Dicke Productions. And we saw it fully bloom when she made us genuinely care about that dumb, discarded shirt as that heart-wrenching hippie conformist Sheila in Town Hall Arts Center’s Hair. 2014 was a defining year for Moore, who flourished in Boulder’s Dinner Theatre’s Sisters of Swing, followed by a run as Fiona in Shrek. Now she’s blowing Gabriel’s horn — and the roof right off of Town Hall — as a smoky-eyed and red-lipped Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes (playing through Dec. 28). Moore plays the iconic fallen minx as an utterly original, utterly vulnerable maneater. Reno allows Moore to play comedy, seduction and love-sickness all at once, while singing some of the best songs in the Cole Porter canon: “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re The Top,” “Anything Goes,” “Friendship” and the number that really makes Town Hall’s production set sail – “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.”

2014 TRUE WEST AWARDS:
1: Norrell Moore
2. Kate Gleason
3. Amanda Berg Wilson and Jeremy Make
4. Ben Cowhick
5. Robert Michael Sanders
6. David Nehls
7. Adrian Egolf
8. Emma Messenger
9. Buntport’s Naughty Bits
10. Tim Howard
11. Gleason Bauer
12. Daniel Traylor
13. Aisha Jackson and Jim Hogan
14. Cast of ‘The Whipping Man’
15. Rick Yaconis
16. Michael R. Duran
17. Laura Norman
18. Jacquie Jo Billings
19. Megan Van De Hey
20. Jeremy Palmer
21. Henry Lowenstein   
22. Sam Gregory
23. Wendy Ishii
24. J. Michael Finley
25. Kristen Samu and Denver Actors Fund volunteers
26. Matthew D. Peters
27. Shannan Steele
28. Ludlow, 1914
29. Spring Awakening and Annapurna
30 Theatre Person of the Year Steve Wilson

ABOUT THE TRUE WEST AWARDS
The True West Awards, which began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001, are the longest-running continuously administered awards program in Colorado theater. This year, the awards have been reconceived to simply recognize 30 award-worthy achievements in local theatre, without categories or nominations. A different honoree will be singled out each day for 30 days.

The True West Awards are administered by arts journalist John Moore, who was named one of the 12 most influential theater critics in the U.S by American Theatre Magazine in 2011. He has since founded The Denver Actors Fund and taken a groundbreaking position as the DCPA’s Senior Arts Journalist. His coverage of the Colorado theatre community can be found at MyDenverCenter.Org.

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