Teachers: this is a full description of the Enchantment Awards program with links to everything you’ll need. We also have a list of benefits of working with our program that you can review.

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Where It Starts

​The Enchantment Awards always begins with an education component for you and your students.

Choose your musical from the list of over 400 shows deemed eligible by the Jimmy Awards, then register your production with the Enchantment Awards, nominating the production and individual students for recognition. Our production awards are Best Production, Best Direction, and Best Ensemble. Our individual awards are Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Supporting Actor.

We will send a team of three adjudicators to view your production and those specified student performances. If you have registered a second cast, you will have a second set of adjudicators come for that cast. Once we receive their evaluations, we send them to you within six weeks of your closing performance (except when you close within six weeks of the Enchantment Awards).

​Our adjudicators look for a tale well told, by your production and its ensemble, and by the nominated individuals. You can review our rubrics to find out more. 

The Next Step

Adjudicators also assess the performances and productions by assigning a “score.”  We compare all scores and find the top 10 students nominated for Best Actress and the top 10 students nominated for Best Actor. We bring those 20 students to Albuquerque to coach them and rehearse them for a week for their participation in the Enchantment Awards show. These 20 nominees will sing a short portion of a song from their performance in a character medley. They also will prepare a solo that they may be chosen to sing on the Popejoy Hall stage. All nominees sing their solos before a panel of judges the day before the performance. They are scored on those solos as well as their character medley performances the night of the show. The 5 actresses and 5 actors with the highest scores will be selected as finalists. They will sing their solos in the second act of the Enchantment Awards.

The top 10 scoring nominees for both Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor join the rehearsal process shortly before the show, preparing them for their portion of the Enchantment Awards. We also provide them with a workshop just for them.

We ask all programs to send us students to represent the school in our Directors Choice Chorus. Each school will have at least 2 participants in this group. They arrive and sing in a medley with the Best Supporting Actress/Actor nominees. They perform and rehearse with those students as well as attend a workshop just for them.

The 5 top scoring productions are finalists for our 3 production awards. We invite those 5 schools to bring a representative number from their show to be performed on stage in Popejoy. Students in that number arrive a day ahead of the show to rehearse it and to attend a workshop just for production nominees.

We also have 7-9 interns, nominated by you or self-nominated and chosen by us, join us for the week to work with our professional staff and the Popejoy staff.

The Performance

As many as 150 students perform on the Popejoy stage during the night of the awards program, including medleys, production numbers, and solos. It’s a a great night of performances by high school students from across the state. For a complete breakdown of who performs what, check out our performance page.

The Awards

During the show, we announce all awards, including a Spotlight Award winner (or winners). The two students chosen for Best Actress and Best Actor each earn a $500 scholarship and free participation in the Jimmy Awards in New York City. The Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor each earn a $250 scholarship.

Cost

We charge each high school drama program $175 per cast (maximum 2) to participate. We never charge students to participate. We provide hotel rooms and chaperones for students who cannot commute to our rehearsals. We feed all students when they are called for rehearsal. Hotel rooms will not be provided after the show this year unless arrangements are made prior to April 1, 2025. Transportation to and from the Enchantment Awards, its rehearsals, and the performance is the responsibility of the school, the students’ parents, or the student. We pay all travel and participation costs for our Best Actress and Best Actor to represent New Mexico at the Jimmy Awards. 

To Register

1. Complete the production registration form. The earlier you register, the greater chance we have of finding appropriate adjudicators for you, thus guaranteeing your position in the program. We retain the right not to accept any registration submitted too close to the first performance. (Ours is the largest geographical area of all the regional awards programs in the Jimmy Awards which presents some unique problems for us.)
2. Nominate cast members (and, possibly, interns) once you’ve cast your production. You will receive a link to our cast nomination and intern nomination forms by email as soon as you register. This can be done immediately after registering your production, if you know your cast, or later.

If you have questions …

… send us an email.

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Photo by Hank Henley