Here’s an awards story that isn’t about mean ol’ Ricky Gervais.

While people were busy wondering if The Social Network will win the Oscars, people gathered at the The Birchmere in Alexandria last night to hear the nominations for this year’s WATCH Awards. For over 11 years the Washington Area Theatre Community Honors has recognized the best in local community theatre. We here at We Love DC typically cover the professional shows within the Helen Hayes realm but as I said earlier this fall, you can find quality entertainment from many different venues here in the DC area and the WATCH Awards highlight some of the best productions and local theatre companies out there- some of which I suspect you may not know about.

Among the top theatres nominated this year are The Elden Street Players out in Herndon, VA; Port Tobacco Players in LaPlata, MD; and The Little Theatre of Alexandria. I’ve seen shows at both Elden Street and LTA and they definitely put on great productions year after year.

In my years down here I challenge anybody to find a better theatre scene outside of New York, not only do we have a great collection of professional theatres but there is a very strong network of local theatres that keeps arts alive within the community. This year’s nominations were chosen among a pool of over 120 eligible shows. To compare, there were over 180 shows that were eligible for the 2010 Helen Hayes awards.

Bottom line that’s a lot of shows in both the professional, and non-professional theatre scenes.

So congrats to last night’s nominees, and make sure you take a look at some of the members theatres of WATCH, you’ll be surprised at what you may find.

2010 WATCH Awards Nominees (PDF)

Patrick Pho

Patrick has been blogging since before it was called blogging. At We Love DC Patrick covers local Theatre, and whatever catches his eye. Patrick’s blog stories, rants, and opinions have been featured in The Washington City Paper, Washington Post Express, CNN, Newschannel 8 Washington, and NBC Washington. See why Patrick loves DC.

You can e-mail him at ppho [at] welovedc.com