| Betty Award | |
| Current Awards: | 22nd Betty Awards |
| Awarded For: | Outstanding achievement in Calgary's professional theatre community |
Betty Mitchell Awards were created in 1998 to celebrate and honour outstanding achievement in Calgary's professional theatre community. It is commonly called the Betty Award and is named for Calgary theatre pioneer Dr. Betty Mitchell.
The awards ceremony for the 2018–19 season was held on June 24 at the Vertigo Theatre in Calgary.[1]
In 2019, Pakistani-Canadian actor Ahad Raza Mir, the first Pakistani actor to play Hamlet in Canada,[2] won the Betty for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Drama for his performance of the title role[3] In that same year Tiffany Ayalik became the first Inuit recipient of a Betty Award.[4]
Awards are given in the following categories:
| Year | Designer | Production |
|---|---|---|
| 2019[5] | ||
| Nicolas Dotsie | BOOM X | |
| Bretta Gerecke | The Invisible Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare | |
| Amelia Scott | A Love Letter to Emily C | |
| Andy Moro | Honour Beat | |
| Elaine J. McCarthy | Everest | |
| 2018[6] | ||
| Jamie Nesbitt | Nine Dragons | |
| Remy Siu | Empire of the Son | |
| T. Erin Gruber | Easter Island | |
| Corwin Ferguson | Julius Caesar | |
| Amelia Scott | To the Light | |
| 2017[7] | ||
| Corwin Ferguson | Richard III | |
| David Leclerc | BOOM | |
| Jamie Nesbitt | The Big Sleep | |
| Amelia Scott with illustrations by Tyler Jenkins | Crime Does Not Pay | |
| JP Thibodeau | Lest We Forget | |
| 2016[8] | ||
| Jamie Nesbitt | Calamity Town | |
| Sean Nieuwenhuis | The Little Prince | |
| Scott Reid | Die Tote Stadt | |
| JP Thibodeau | The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook | |
| Amelia Scott and Joel Adria | Cockroach | |
| 2015[9] | ||
| Andrzej Goulding | Silent Night | |
| Jamie Nesbitt | Liberation Days | |
| Jamie Nesbitt | Farewell, My Lovely | |
| Kalyna Conrad | Legoland | |
| Wladimiro A. Woyno R., Matthew Waddell and Laura Anzola | The Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst | |
| 2014[10] | ||
| Kaely Dekker | n00b | |
| Corwin Ferguson | You Will Remember Me | |
| T. Erin Gruber | A Bomb in the Heart | |
| Jamie Nesbitt | The Hound of the Baskervilles | |
| Sean Nieuwenhuis | The Mountaintop | |
| Betty Mitchell Award Ceremonies | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ceremony | Venue | Date | Host(s) |
| 1st | Stage West | August 24, 1998 | Lindsay Burns[11] |
| 2nd | Stage West | August 30, 1999 | [12] |
| 3rd | Stage West | August 28, 2000 | |
| 4th | Stage West | August 28, 2001 | Dave Kelly Elizabeth Stepkowski[13] |
| 5th | Stage West | August 26, 2002 | Dave Kelly Karen Johnson-Diamond[14] |
| 6th | Stage West | August 25, 2003 | Mark Bellamy Kevin Rothery[15] |
| 7th | Stage West | August 30, 2004 | |
| 8th | Stage West | August 29, 2005 | Bob White Laura Parken[16] |
| 9th | Stage West | August 28, 2006 | Grant Linneberg[17] |
| 10th | Stage West | 2007 | |
| 11th | Stage West | August 25, 2008 | Dave Kelly[18] [19] |
| 12th | August 24, 2009 | ||
| 13th | August 30, 2010 | AJ Demers Julie Orton | |
| 14th | Stage West | August 20, 2011 | Karen Johnson-Diamond Kevin Rothery |
| 15th | Stage West | August 27, 2012 | Russell Bowers |
| 16th | Stage West | August 26, 2013 | Nicole Zylstra Stafford Perry |
| 17th | Stage West | August 18, 2014 | Stephen Hair[20] |
| 18th | Vertigo Theatre | August 24, 2015 | Julie Orton |
| 19th | Vertigo Theatre | 2016 | Josh Bertwistle, Carly McKee Chris Enright, Nicole Zylstra |
| 20th | Vertigo Theatre | 2017 | Mark Bellamy Selena Wong |
| 21st | Vertigo Theatre | June 25, 2018 | Katherine Fadum Michael Tan[21] |
| 22nd | Vertigo Theatre | June 24, 2019 | Raven Virginia |
The original Betty Mitchell Award statue, designed by local Calgary sculptor, Petronella Overes, was inspired by the geography surrounding Calgary. It was a steel base containing a glass monolith with motifs of mountains and prairies. For the 10th anniversary of the awards in 2007 she redesigned it replacing the steel base with powder coated aluminum and increased the contrast in the tone and texture of the awards metal and glass.
The Award received its most recent design update in 2014 when the Overes design was replaced with a multi-colour teardrop-shaped glass sculpture created by a local glass blowing collective, Bee Kingdom Glass. Each one is unique, as they are hand-blown.