The only major theatre awards voted for by the paying public, the tenth Whatsonstage.com Awards, has already broken records, with a fortnight left to go.
As of 10am today, 18 January 2010, more than 36,000 people have voted in the 2010 Whatsonstage.com Awards, which tops the record of 35,000 set last year in 2009.
The Whatsonstage.com Awards were born, almost by accident, ten years ago this month. When the nominations for that year’s Laurence Olivier Awards were announced, Whatsonstage.com published the shortlists and allowed readers to vote for who they thought should win. More than 7,000 people voted in five weeks, and the results were very different from the decisions of the Olivier judges.
The following year, Whatsonstage.com published its own shortlists and the “theatergoers choice” awards have evolved from that. Years of steady growth show that voting figures more than doubled from 12,000 to 25,000 between the 2007 and 2008 prizegivings – and have continued to gain dramatically in popularity and prominence since 2008, the same year the Whatsonstage.com Awards Concert was launched, where trophies are presented to the winners in front of a sell-out audience of theatergoer voters, at a West End theatre.
This year, the 2010 Awards Concert takes place at 7pm on Sunday 14 February 2010, at the 1,200-seat Prince of Wales Theatre, home of Mama Mia.
