In between the different award presentations, the audience was delighted with wonderful performances. Nicole Halla revived her tear wrenching &uot;Memory&uot; from CATS. Whitney Moore and Chris Tinkler showed us &uot;True Love&uot;. Lindsey Moore and Dan Kimble reminded us to &uot;Just Say No.&uot; Tena Greene serenaded all with&bsp; &uot;Summertime&uot; And of course Best Musical Direction nominees, Lena Duncan and Pam McNeil, accompanied them. But the show-stopper or &uot;stomper&uot; was the Tap Dames. Their opening performance to &uot;New York, New York&uot; set the tone for the evening and the finale showed Jennifer Lopez how they can move to &uot;Let&39;s Get Loud.&uot; Every one walked out tapping and smiling.

The big winner of this event was &uot;Cats,&uot; with Chris Tinkler who took home Morris&39;s for Best Set Design and Best Director, Sherry Carter for Best Costume Design and Lena Duncan for Best Musical Direction.

The upset of the evening was for Best Type Casting. After Sam Lovelace was announced, Marianne Carruth (a.k.a. Nurse Ratchet) and her henchmen marched onto the stage. After swiping the Morris from Jean Winslett&39;s hands, Marianne informed the audience, &uot;I would like to thank you for this award, but you didn&39;t vote for me.&uot; She stalked back to her seat after warning the crowd that there was pain in their future.

Tena Greene, winner of the Best Actress Award, was quite overwhelmed by the honor. She could barely stop the tears long enough to collect the Morris.

The secret honor of the evening was reserved for Betty Brewer. After presenting the award for Best Actor, Mrs. Brewer was surrounded by the TLT board and thanked for her years of support. Chris Tinkler said, &uot;Calling what Betty does just volunteering is like saying what Mikhail Baryshnikov does is just dancing.&uot; The audience showed Mrs. Brewer how valuable her years of service has been to them and how much they love her with a standing ovation that lasted 5 minutes.

The remaining awards were given as follows:

Best Musician – Concert Pianist Beth Child

Best Youth Actress – Sam E Spencer

Best Youth Actor – Jay Brown

Best Actor – Lavin Cuddihee

‐ article submitted