The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page H06

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Sunday, October 5, 2008 A prize of recognition, opportunity H6 www.philly.com jj Haas Award Nominees This year's five nominees for the $10,000 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theater Artist are: Kala Moses Baxter, actress, began her career at Freedom Theatre. She was seen last season in the Arden's The Piano Lesson and, earlier, in The Story at Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Wilma's Love and Anger. Jeb Kreager, actor, is also nominated this year for his roles in InterAct's Frozen and Theater Exile's Mr. Marmalade.

A 2007 Haas nominee, he was most recently seen in the Live Arts Festival's The European Lesson. Matt Pfeiffer, actordirector, is also nominated this year for direction of Theatre Exile's Bug. Last year he was up for the Haas, and for direction of Glengarry Glen Ross and acting in Red Light Winter, both Theatre Exile. Sarah Sanford, actress, most recently in Live Arts' The European Lesson. She performed last year in Lantern's Othello.

Charlotte Cloe Fox Wind, costume designer, a Barrymore nominee this year for costumes for Villanova's The Illusion. She was a 2006 Haas nominee, and her work will appear on three stages this season. Costumes for "The Illusion," above, by Charlotte Cloe Fox Wind, nominated for a Haas Award and a Barrymore. Other Haas nominees, from top left: Kala Moses Baxter, Jeb Kreager and Sarah Sanford. The Haas Award, to be given tomorrow, honors a promising local theater artist and bestows welcome cash as well.

By Howard Shapiro INQUIRER STAFF WRITER For actress and artistic director Jennifer Childs, a $10,000 prize meant she could own the roof over her head. She used it for a down payment on a house. For playwright Michael Hollinger, $10,000 provided not just a financial boost but also a mental one: The infusion of money encouraged him to leave his job as a theatrical literary manager and begin writing full-time. And for actress Grace Gonglew-ski, $10,000 bought new head shots, a student loan payoff, additional theater classes, and a savings account with a higher deposit. (Plus, OK, a new pair of shoes.) These three are past winners of a special honor the F.

Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theater Artist presented at the Barrymore Awards, the region's annual professional theater accolades. This year's Haas winner will be revealed, along with all the others, tomorrow night at the Crystal Tea Room in the Wanamaker Building. While the typical categories best actor or actress, best musical or play, and the like bring bragging rights and esteem to the professionals and theater companies that win, only the Haas Award comes with all that and money, too. In addition to the winner's $10,000 prize, each of the four runners-up receives $1,000. Named for the late chairman of Rohm Haas, the pharmaceutical firm, the award goes to a theater artist who shows outstanding promise and is dedicated to working in the Philadelphia theater community an expanding body of artists that, aided by similarly expanding audiences, has turned theater into a force that sells more than a million tickets a year.

The $10,000 is given specifically to help cover the winner's living expenses and enable him or her to with my own two hands, and now we have a daughter," writes Matt Saunders, a freelance designer and performer who is also a company member of the city's cutting-edge New Paradise Laboratories. Saunders took home the award last year given at the same ceremony in which the Philadelphia Theatre Alliance, sponsor of the Barrymores, honored Carole Haas Gravagno with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Saunders says he is at home in the city's theater world, and enjoys close relationships with several companies and directors. "I feel very, very connected to this community and have a very deep affection for it," he writes. "It's everything that I could want in a career, in a life the Haas just reaffirmed it all." 11 is the Walnut Street Theatre's Les Miser ables, one of the first re-imaginings of the celebrated musical's staging since it premiered 22 years ago.

The Arden Theatre Company is next with eight nominations for its production of Stephen Sondheim's dark musical Assassins. Many Haas Award winners either have won in categories for such musicals and plays, or go on to win in ensuing years. Three of this year's five Haas nominees are also up for Barrymores as an actor, a director and a costume designer and three have previously been Haas nominees. While they take gigs elsewhere, most Haas Award winners have elected to live and stay in Philadelphia. "I was already pretty committed to Philly, but the award validated that decision," Childs e-mails.

In addition to her presence on local stages, she is artistic director of 1812 Productions, devoted to comedy "My wife is from Philly, we own our own home that I renovated focus on theater and possibly take the next career step. The award has been given every year since Gon-glewski won in 1995 at the first Bar-rymores. At a gathering of past winners last year, "many of them told us they have been able to start families and buy homes with the money it's very gratifying. It would really have pleased my former husband," says Carole Haas Gravagno, a passionate supporter of the arts who sits on several boards, and who established the award to honor her late husband's memory. "The amount of money I give isn't enough to live on, but it gives people a little opportunity to do something." In fact, $10,000 represents a sizable chunk of change for many theater artists.

Even so, the lasting part of the award, former recipients say, is the recognition and the encouragement. "The money I got from the award was not used for anything specifically, it just added to our ability to lead a non-starving artist's life," actor Ian Merrill Peakes, the 2003 winner, writes in an e-mail. "The impact the award has had on me is mostly measured in confidence." Multimedia designer Jorge Cous-ineau, who won in 2004 and, like other former recipients, responded by e-mail to questions about the award, writes that "the professional appreciation resulted in more offers, more than enough to schedule uninterrupted seasons ever since." Cousineau does not overstate the case; since January, he has designed multimedia and special effects for six plays at professional Philadelphia theater companies, and for one film. He is nominated tomorrow night for two design awards, and this year won a Lortel, Off-Broadway's biggest honor, for sound design on Opus, a play written by fellow Haas-winner Hollinger. It premiered here at the Arden Theatre Company and went on to a New York production.

The show that generated the most Barrymore nominations this year Contact staff writer Howard Shapiro at 215-854-5727 or hshapirophillynews.com. Read his recent work at http:go.philly.comhowardshapiro. Hook, line, singer: Ween's fishin' musician CLEM MURRAY Staff Photographer -fishes along the Delaware River just north of New HopeLambertville as other fishermen motor by. His favorite gig: Mickey Melchiondo Dean Ween WEEN from HI about it is hardly rock-star style. He's got a banged-up 12-foot john-boat with an anemic four-horsepower outboard.

"This is my third boat," he says. "The first was stolen and the second washed away along with the dock in one of those floods." The fishin' musician misses no opportunity to drop a line in the water. "If my wife is going out for an hour," he says. "I can get in 45 minutes of fishing, and she never even knows I'm gone." Oops, until now. Sorry, Mickey.

He even pulls shifts in a local tackle shop, mostly because he spends so much time there anyway. His passion has grown into a thriving sideline. Melchiondo is filming his often raucous fishing expeditions with friends and the occasional celebrity (like Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers) as Web-isodes of an Internet-based show called the Brownie Troop Fishing Show (available online at www.brownietroopfs.com). "This is what fishing is actually like," he says. "It's not some guy in a tournament bass boat wearing a uniform covered with patches for his sponsors like some NASCAR driver.

"Fishing is bunch of dudes drinking, usually with hooks stuck in the sides of their hands, pissing in the water and having a great time." Most of the seven episodes to this point have been filmed on the river or at the Jersey Shore, where Melchiondo loves to surf-cast during the spring and fall striped bass runs. "Right now we're doing it where we know," he says. "I'm fortunate to have some of the best fishing on the East Coast right where I live. "What's next for us is we'll start traveling. We're going to Montauk later this fall.

We're going to Florida in December, and we got an invite to catch sturgeon on the Snake River. What is that, Idaho? I would love to catch a sturgeon. They can be 10 feet long." The Brownie Troop project grew out of Melchiondo's role as keeper of the Ween Web site (www.ween.com). "I do all the content," he says. "I had sections for audio links, tour dates, blah blah blah.

And then there's this 'Waste' section. It was my random dribblings about the Phillies or the Flyers or some chiondo allows that his music career often gets in the way of his fishing, especially over the last two years, which Ween devoted to its most recent CD, La Cucaracha. "We went right from the song writing to the recording and right from the recording to rehearsing and touring," he says. "Really, since '06 I haven't had a break. "While we were touring, I'd be sitting in hotel rooms in the Midwest having dreams about stripers.

Since the tour ended I've been fishing with a vengeance." And chronicling his exploits. Yet considering how obsessive Melchiondo is about Brownie Troop, he's also surprisingly casual. "When I tell you I don't really care what anybody thinks about it it's one thing to say that I truly mean it," he says. "I don't give a hoot what anybody thinks about it. I hope that they like it, honestly, but it's kind of like my band: I'm not doing it for anybody else.

I'm doing it completely for my own entertainment and fun." Chances are that long after his musical career is over, Melchiondo will still be flipping wacky worms into the current. Says Gatley, "He'll be an 80-year-old man in a 12-foot tin can out on this river." Chris Gatley, a guide who works the same waters Melchiondo does, met the musician 14 years ago, when he was a frequent visitor at the New Hope party house where Gatley lived with other twentysome-things. "I was leaving at 3 or 4 in the morning to go fishing when these guys were stumbling in from the bar," Gatley says. "Mickey liked to fish, but back then it was all about the music, all about going out and carrying on." Melchiondo, recently turned 38, has eased up on the carousing. "We got over the whole 'party every night, all night' thing.

We've been in the band so long now, you realize the body can't sustain that unless you're Keith Richards. Although I try," he says, laughing. After a couple of hours on the river, we head over to the 8-by-15-foot shed (Melchiondo calls it "the crack where he keeps his fishing gear and the video equipment to edit the Brownie Troop footage. Each episode has its own sound track, either instrumental music the guitarist recorded but never released or selections of everyone from Lightnin' Hopkins to Bruce Springsteen. Melchiondo's big SUV has an Island Beach State Park sportfishing permit on the rear window and more sand on the floorboards than Brian Wilson's living room.

Sitting outside the shed, Mel In "the crack shack," the shed where Mickey keeps fishing gear and edits the online "Brownie Troop Fishing Show" of his angling trips. record I bought. Whatever I wanted. I even put recipes on there," he says, laughing. "I started posting fishing reports, and I got all this response from Ween fans that were fishermen.

It got to the point where the tour dates were from last year, but my fishing page was updated daily." Eventually he moved the baited content to its own site and started getting responses from fishermen who had never heard of Ween. Melchiondo's love of fishing predates even the band, which he and Freeman founded with a tape deck in 1984 when they were both 14. "I started where everyone starts: bobber fishing with worms and corn and stuff down at Yardley Pond and in creeks catching sun-nies and chub and carp," he says. "I went to the same hockey camp in Minnesota for three or four years, and I spent more time out fishing in a canoe than I did on skates." Contact staff writer David Hiltbrand at dhiltbrand phillynews.com or 215-854-4552. Read his recent work at http:go.philly.comdaveondemand..