Jeff Award news

WHAT THE JEFF? The 19th-century thespian mulls over the policy change of his namesake award.

After three decades of playing nice, we no longer have to pretend we’re all winners. The Joseph Jefferson committee announced last week that the recently controversial Non-Equity Jeff Award (known prior to this season as the Jeff Citation) will become a competitive award beginning next year.

The prize, given to nonunion Chicago theater, is supposed to be the Tony Awards of the city’s famously scrappy Off Loop theater scene. (It’s named, of course, for 19th-century Our American Cousin actor Joseph Jefferson, pictured.)

But because of the incomprehensible, Mensa-level math by which the winners are determined (the system formerly weighed the percentage of committee members who saw the show against the number of votes it received, and possibly factored in your credit score), there are very often multiple recipients in each category.

Under the old system, it was possible for a category to have, say, six nominees and no fewer than three winners. In addition to diminishing the value of the award—it’s like winning one third of a prize—it made the nonrecipients in the multiple-winner categories seem like even bigger losers: How bad did your work have to be to not even score in the top three? (It almost makes going without a nomination seem preferable.) But the elimination of the Special Olympics–style everybody-gets-a-medal system, part of the ongoing Jeff makeover that began with a brand survey, will add a new professionalism to the Non-Equity Jeff.

Now if we could only figure out a way to pay the people worthy of a professional prize in actual professional dollars.