How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Jeff Awards?

as long as i've lived in Chicago (since 2013 now), i've been hearing complaints about the Joseph "Jeff" Jefferson Awards. a year wouldn't go by without someone complaining about the organization, the biases within the committee, the lack of diversity in membership and nominations, how boring their choices tended to be, and how awards don't really matter at the end of the day. and then, like clockwork, the nominations would come out, and you, or your friends, had received some recognition and all those complaints washed away. it was time to party, time to celebrate, time to Be In Community With One Another. sure the Jeffs have their problems, but don't we all?

well, it appears that, in the aftermath of this week's Non-Equity Jeff Awards, the theater community (the non-equity companies, at least) may have finally hit a breaking point with their relationship to the Jeff Committee and those coveted star-shaped trophies.
so, how did we get here?

let's catch everyone up to speed as much as one can;

• the week of January 27th, 2026, numerous artists within Chicago's Non-Equity (non-union) theater community released a litany of statements alleging abuses against Charles Askenaizer, Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed storefront company, Invictus Theatre Company. the allegations alluded to mental, physical, and emotional manipulation perpetrated by Charles both in and outside of the rehearsal room. at best, these were the edgy, over-the-top tactics of a theater director far in over their head. at worst, these were actively manipulative breaches of space, trust, and consent instigated to gain dominance and power over others through physical and emotional degradation. at a certain point, there's practically no difference between the two.
• on Wednesday, February 4th, the Joseph "Jeff" Jefferson Committee (the locally recognized "primary" awards body for Chicago Theatre. our own Tony Awards, if you will) announced their nominations for the upcoming Non-Equity Jeff Awards (the Jeffs hold two separate ceremonies to respectively honor Equity and Non-Equity productions in Chicago). Invictus' 2025 production of Angels in America swept the nomination slate, with Charles personally receiving a nomination for Best Director of a Play. it is unclear where the Jeff Committee were in their nominations process by the time the allegations against Charles were made public, or if they were even aware of said allegations by the time the nominations were announced.
• on Thursday, February 5th, a number of updates were released about the current state of Invictus;
  • after four cast members of their upcoming production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof resigned from the show because of said allegations, the production was indefinitely postponed.
  • Charles stepped down from his role on the company's board, as well as from his AD role, while the Board conducts an investigation into these allegations.
  • details about their next production, a spring production of Caroline, or Change, have yet to be solidified.
• over email and social media, countless artists implored the Jeff Committee to - at the very least - rescind the directing nomination for Charles Askenaizer. these requests were either ignored or denied.
  • this is all on top of an additional nomination for Director of a Short Run for David Zak, an artist with his own allegedly dubious history in the theater scene that we don't have time to get into here.
• the Non-Equity Jeff Awards were held the evening of Monday, March 23rd, 2026. thankfully, David Zak did not win. unfortunately, Charles Askenaizer did win. Charles was not present at the awards, but his girlfriend accepted the award on his behalf, reading a supposedly pre-written speech where Charles - here's the kicker - compared his current "plight" to the anti-Semitism that his Holocaust Survivor Grandfather went through in the aftermath of the Shoah (as a friend of mine said to me, "it's like a parody of what to do in a situation like this").
• as the evening of the awards transpired, it feels important to note that the Jeff Committee would post the winners of each award on social media (primarily Facebook and Instagram, as far as I can tell). of all of the winners, Charles' post was the only one that preemptively had the comments turned off upon being posted. it's undeniable at this point that this was an intentional act.

okay great, you can get some water and a snack after all that.
heck, here's a cat for your troubles.

welcome back!

now then...genuinely...where do we go from here?

i've honestly been debating how much to really add to this whole saga, but as someone who has been sporadically part of the Chicago Theater Community for over a decade now (be it as a performer, director, arts administrator, or critic), it felt somewhat necessary to try reckon with the place of the Jeffs within the community. most major theater cities in the U.S. do have some kind of local theater awards (D.C. has the Helen Hayes, Philadelphia has the Barrymores, etc), and the Jeffs have been a part of the Chicago theatrical ecosystem since 1968, so, whether people like it or not, they're not just something one can blithely ignore. in my view, something must be done in the aftermath of a major arts organization's overt attempts to reward an alleged abuser and - consciously or otherwise - shield them from accountability for their actions.

as much as I'm not one for binary thought, there does seem to be a clear division between folks in the community who Want Some Sort of Award Ceremony For Their Art and Those Who Don't. I genuinely think there is validity to both camps, and I personally think a happy medium can be found between the two, but for my money, here are some potential scenarios that I could see playing out over the coming weeks/months for everyone to mull over;

• Reform the Jeffs
  • with the notoriety and infrastructure already there, perhaps there is a means of fixing the Jeffs from the iNsIdE? would a meeting between Artistic Directors of various theaters, the League of Chicago Theatres, and the Jeff Committee Chairs do any good? could anything come from working to get the Jeffs to publicly apologize and acknowledge their mistakes, reform their judging practices, their nominations practices, their membership practices etc, and (jesus christ) Build a Better Jeffs? to be honest, the more I'm writing this section....
• Divest from the Jeffs
  • ...maybe it's best to just leave that all behind? alongside the notably serious offenses of Awarding an Alleged Abuser after being made aware repeatedly of said alleged abuses, the Jeffs as an awards body haven't really had their finger on the pulse of the Chicago Theater Scene in quite a while (at least not as long as I've been here). there are very few working artists on the committee, and their tastes tend to align with the city's designated aesthetics of mundanity. Theatre for Young Audiences is a field that doesn't even qualify for consideration within their purview, and, perhaps most gallingly, productions and companies based in the South and West sides of the city are practically ignored by the Jeffs, leading to a hegemonic slew of nominees and work considered "commendable" and "recommended" year after year. what good is trying to fix something so utterly broken? best to leave relics in the past and move valiantly forward.
    we've started to see this already; as of this writing, Visión Latino Theatre Company, Theater Above the Law, and Babes With Blades Theater Co. have all officially announced their intentions to sever ties with the Jeff Committee. i wouldn't be surprised to see more companies follow suit, and part of me hopes they do. it'd be a rude awakening for the staid Jeff Members to see that their actions do, indeed, have consequences.
    
    so, if fully leaving the Jeffs behind does happen, then the next potential step would be to....
• Create a New Chicago Theater Awards Body
  • this is perhaps the idea that I've seen floated around the most often when anti-Jeff discussions emerge, and it's also the idea that would be the toughest to actually get off the ground, though not impossible! it would just take a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands. were one to attempt to create a new awards body, there would be a myriad of questions surrounding membership policies, show eligibility, awards structure, etc. would a new Chicago Theater Awards stick with the Oscars/Tonys/Jeffs categorization style, or would it try something like New York's Obie Awards, where awards are simply given out within set categories, sans nominees? could a monetary prize be attached to any of these prizes à la the Pulitzers? would this award be under the auspices of the League of Chicago Theatres, or some new upstart institution comprised of artists and administrators and fellow theater luminaries? is there a means of ethically creating some new means of uniting as a community to celebrate a season of work in this wonderful theater city?
    were the community interested in continuing the tradition of awarding/celebrating their peers, this is the kind of work that would go into it, but it would certainly take a lot of work. for those interested in do so, I say have at it now while the iron is hot.
    but of course, there's also the cogent sentiment that...
• Awards? Who Needs 'Em!
  • as many are quick to point out, the Academy Awards were created in no small part as a means of squashing unionization efforts within Hollywood, a means of creating the illusion of community without actually supporting the labor that goes into that community. what's the point of continuing to support the system of arts competition that pits theater makers against each other for needless purposes? why not just make the work, support the work, support each other, and carry on? there are other methods of celebrating, supporting, and marketing each other's work (critical reviews, social media shout-outs, good ole word-of-mouth) that have proven far more successful than the Jeffs in actually amplifying the most notable work in our city. let's just do away with awards altogether and let the work stand on its own.

whatever path forward the community chooses to take, in the aftermath of a truly horrifying and upsetting situation, I think there's one lesson that absolutely should be taken to heart.

Listen to each other, and take care of each other.

this is all going to happen again. there are more Charles Askenaizers and David Zaks and Darrel Coxs and Whomever Else Hasn't Been Called In Yet out there waiting in the wings, and the longer that the artists in this city - young people running off of a scarcity mindset within this field as it is - ignore the words of those warning us about them, the more their work will be praised and awarded, with any whispers of abuse and harm and distrust hushed to the side. as many like to say, we keep us safe.
communities are stronger than individuals, and as long as we're looking out for each other, listening to one another with care and good faith, and being preemptive in our support for one another, then the Chicago theater community can hope to be a place where our values and our art and our collaborative spirit are more noteworthy than any award out there.