The theater scene

Everyone's heard of the Tonys, the Emmys, the Golden Globes. National awards for excellence on stage and screen.

We had no idea, though, that we would ever live in a place that has an active enough professional theatrical scene to deserve its own awards ceremony. The Kevin Kline Awards have been a St. Louis tradition since 2006. Though we didn't attend the ceremony itself, it turns out we chose our productions wisely last year. Every show we saw in 2010 at either The Muny or Upstream Theater was nominated, most for multiple categories. We're pretty certain last night's world premiere of The Death of Atahualpa will work its way into next year's ceremony as well.

But wait, there's more.It's one thing for the professional scene to have an awards ceremony. Quite another for the high school productions. St. Louis is home to one of only 16 chapters of The Cappies in all of the U.S. and Canada. MICDS is participating for the first time this school year.

Wherever we go, it's darn good theater.