2nd Annual Voice Arts® Awards Announces 2015 Presenters

Voiceover Industry Award Ceremony Presenters Include Leading Voice Actors and Acclaimed Personalities Presenters include: Oscars ceremony writer Bruce Vilanch, Emmy Award ceremony announcer Joe Cipriano, Legendary Voice of Babe the Pig EG Daily, Iconic Television Actors John Amos and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Featured Voice in Pixar’s Inside Out and Sponge Bob Square Pants Lori Alan, Legendary voice actor from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Boxtrolls Pat Fraley, Police Academy films actor and sound master Michael Winslow and CBS Entertainment Reporter Suzanne Marques

The Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS) is delighted to announce today the talented personalities who will serve as presenters for the 2015 Voice Arts®Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday November 15th at the Pacific Design Center. The Voice Arts® Awards is an international competition showcasing the best work in professional voiceover acting, creative direction and communications for advertising, audiobook narration, movie trailers, video gaming, animation, television, radio and casting realms.

The Voice Arts®Awards Presenters are artists from around the world, who represent the best-in-class professional voiceover talents in the industry, and also media personalities who work behind the microphones and cameras. The 2015 Voice Arts®Awards presenters include:

PRESENTER NOTES:
JOE CIPRIANO: Voice of the Emmy Awards, CBS television promos and FOX television promos
JOAN BAKER: Author of Secrets of Voiceover Success, Co-founder of the Voice Arts® Awards.
SCOTT BRICK: Most respected name in Audiobook narration. Grammy finalist and Audie Award-winning narrator of In Cold Blood, Mystic River, Helter Skelter, 700 other audiobooks
CHUCK AND STACEY: She’s the host of Disney World TV and he’s the VO producer/director to the Hollywood VO stars. Together they host the nominated VO Buzz Weekly video podcast
EG DAILY: Voice of Babe the Pig in the award winning movie
ED LOH: Editor in Chief of Motor Trend Magazine
MALCOLM-JAMAL WARNER: Beloved actor from television’s Cosby show who is also an award winning voice actor and is a 2015 VAA nominee
JOHN AMOS: Acclaimed character actor in numerous films and television programs and one of the most iconic father figure characters in America on the 70’s dramedy ‘Good Times’
SUZANNE MARQUES: Entertainment reporter for KCBS in Los Angeles
BRUCE VILANCH: Award winning comedy writer who is a multiple Emmy award winning writer for multiple awards shows, and also, the former head writer for the Oscars ceremony
PAT FRALEY: Legendary voice actor and voiceover teacher known for voicing recognized characters from various films and series including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Boxtrolls
LORI ALAN: Voice of Pearl the Whale on SpongeBob Square Pants & featured in Pixar’s Inside Out: Lori Alan
MICHAEL WINSLOW: Master vocal sound maker and vocal sound effects teacher, known for voicing his special effects in the Police Academy film series

“We are tremendously excited to have the honor of welcoming many of the best voice actors from around the world to the Voice Arts®Awards stage to participate in our ceremony,” says SOVAS CEO Rudy Gaskins. “We are humbled.”

The 2015 Voice Arts®Awards full list of nominees, including Tim Gunn, Beyonce, Ron Perlman and Brian Blessed, are featured at sovas.org. The winners in each category will be unveiled on November 15th, along with a special award presentation of the Voice Arts® Icon Award–the jury’s highest honor—to William Shatner, for lifetime achievement. Also being presented, in partnership with Backstage® Magazine and the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences, is the Backstage® Vanguard Award for Outstanding Casting, which will be presented to Pixar Animation casting honchos Kevin Reher and Natalie Lyon. They will receive their awards the night before at the SOVAS created THAT’S VOICEOVER! CONFERENCE and will be acknowledged at the Voice Arts®Awards ceremony. Entries were submitted from various entities including: Wendy’s, Telemundo, Discovery Channel, CNN, NBC Sports, ABC Entertainment, Comedy Central, Oxygen Network, NBA on TNT, FOX, Ovation Network and many others. For more information on the Voice Arts Awards, visit: VoiceArts.org.

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About The Voice Arts® Awards
The Voice Arts® Awards is an international awards competition created by the Society Of Voice Arts And Sciences (SOVAS). The open competition features a number of categories of voice arts, and is voted upon by award-winning experts from the various disciplines that constitute the entry categories. SOVAS honors industry visionaries and pioneers of the voice arts with a number of special awards including the Voice Arts Icon Awards for lifetime achievement. Awards are presented during a live Voice Arts® Awards Gala which is open to the public. For more information about Society Of Voice Arts And Sciences (SOVAS), or for tickets to Voice Arts® Awards Gala, visit VoiceArts.org.

Purpose
The purpose of the Voice Arts® Awards is to provide international acknowledgement of the extraordinary skill and artistry of voiceover acting and associated industry professions. The Awards also encourage a best-in-class standard of achievement to which the voiceover industry can continually aspire. The Voice Arts® Awards will honor and acknowledge the voice actors, creative directors, copywriters, casting directors, talent agents, directors, producers, audio engineers, account executives, equipment manufacturers, podcasters, bloggers and others who create and sustain excellence within the voiceover industry. The Voice Arts® Award represents one of a host of programs administered by the Society Of Voice Arts And Sciences (SOVAS), a non-profit 501 (c)3 corporation, whose overall mission is to the highest levels of artistic achievement, while providing support for education, training, career advancement and gainful employment throughout all facets of the voiceover industry.

Contact    
Judi Durand, DAJDPR, 703-725-6017 (m)
Daryl Williams, DAJDPR, 646-373-6736 (m)

The post Bruce Vilanch Among 2nd Annual Voice Arts® Awards 2015 Presenters first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

“You get your start in comedy by looking in the mirror and thinking what you see is unusual,” says Bruce Vilanch. “So you start making funny faces and perform for yourself.”

Sixty-six years — and six Emmys — after first catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, Vilanch is still screwing up his face and cracking wise. His signature heft, charmingly raspy voice, and unstoppable wit marked him for a career in comedy from the get go. It helped that he had a “deep-seated need to express [myself],” Vilanch says. “Also, to be funny.”

More than just a comedian, Vilanch has become a force of nature in Hollywood and is particularly known for co-penning the Academy Awards each year. Now, he’s teamed up with lesbian comedian Judy Gold (a two-time Emmy award winner herself) for Big and Tall: Bruce Vilanch and Judy Gold, playing this weekend at the Alden Theatre. “I’m number one, and she’s number two,” Vilanch quips. The comedians met while Gold was working on Margaret Cho’s sitcom, All-American Girl. “I don’t remember exactly when lightning struck,” Vilanch says, “but we were two big gay Jews, and we’re both very showbizzy, so it was a natural fit.”

But beyond being gay and Jewish, Gold has one more more handicap — at least in Hollywood’s terms — than Vilanch: being a woman. “It was interesting for Judy, because at the beginning she wasn’t out. It was pre-Ellen,” Vilanch says. “And because all women are perceived as romantic figures, the vast unwashed audiences had to think she had a shot at getting a man.”

In our post-Ellen world, however, Vilanch believes comedians can thrive on being gay. “There are people who are Professional Homosexuals, and those who are Homosexual Professionals,” he says. “People who were gay who did what they did, and people who what they did was being gay. When I get up there, I play myself. I’ve been authentic my entire life.” — Connor J. Hogan

Big and Tall: Bruce Vilanch and Judy Gold is Saturday, November 7th at 9 p.m. at the Alden Theatre in the McLean Community Center, 1234 Ingleside Ave., McLean, Va. Tickets range from $20 to $72. For more information, visit mcleancenter.org/alden-theatre.

The post Super-Sized Comedy: Bruce Vilanch first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

If you love something, set it free, and if it returns, it was meant to be.

Or have the execs at HBO cancel it, and if it returns, it was meant to be watched. Lisa Kudrow‘s meta-comedy The Comeback, which was axed nine years ago, is going to be back on the air and is just as funny as ever.

Last night, Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater unfurled the red carpet in celebration of Kudrow’s reprisal of her role as the awkward, repressed, self-deluded Valerie Cherish. The artist formerly known as Phoebe Buffay was joined at the gala screening of the new season’s first two episodes by the show’s co-creator Michael Patrick King, as well as a cavalcade of returning co-stars including Laura Silverman, Lance Barber and Damian Young. The cast was bolstered by a roster of the town’s top power gays, including Andrew Rannells, Jane Lynch, Sara Gilbert, Dan Bucatinsky and queen of queer comedy Bruce Vilanch.

“I hope Mickey the makeup guy is in it,” said Vilanch, chatting about the new season before the screening. “I missed the end of the season, so I hope he didn’t die.”

Fans of Mickey, Valerie’s personal makeup artist/sassy gay sidekick, portrayed by Robert Michael Morris, can breathe a sigh of relief. The character survived his melanoma scare from the end of the previous season. And thank god, because Mickey is this series’ version of The Simpsons’ Ralph Wiggum. Every line out of his mouth is comic gold.

For those who were too cheap to spring for premium cable nearly a decade ago, here’s the CliffsNotes version of The Comeback. The mockumentary-style series is like one of those Russian nesting dolls. A reality TV show chronicles faded television star Valerie Cherish as she shoots a cheesy sitcom called Room and Bored in a desperate attempt at recapturing the spotlight. Its a show about a show about a show.

The new season is even more meta. Picking up nine years after the cancellation of the short-lived sitcom, Cherish’s career is flailing. Among her many missteps is self-sabotaging her chance at being one of Bravo’s Housewives of Beverly Hills several years prior, shown via pseudo-raw footage in a hilarious scene with Frontiers friend Lisa Vanderpump. Valerie discovers that Paulie G, the drug addict douchebag who wrote Room and Bored, has created a new show called Seeing Red, a derogatory dramedy (“its like a comedy without the laughs”) about his experience working with Cherish. When Val storms into a casting session to confront him, she ends up reading for—and accepting—the lead role, thus playing her own insulting caricature. For those at home keeping score, the series is now a show about a show capturing a show that’s rehashing what happened behind the scenes of a show that was framed by a reality TV show. Despite the thickly layered premise, the execution is clean and laugh-filled.

After the screening, the audience moseyed over to The Roosevelt for the after-party. Waitresses in red-headed Valerie Cherish wigs doled out wine and mini ahi steaks to HBO’s extended family. But the most popular gay lunch table was Bruce Villanch‘s. As the adage goes, if you have nothing nice to say, go sit next to Bruce. In between the sass and the snark, the conversation touched upon the topic of Frontiers’ upcoming “L.A.’s Most Eligible Bachelors” issue.

“I’m one of you,” quipped Vilanch to the magazine’s collective readers. “I’m not young, I’m not nubile, but I’m a bachelor.”

Robert Michael Morris had a more specific notion of his perfect man. “Someone who cooks and cleans and never criticizes and thinks I’m the best thing since sliced bread,” he said.

Girls heartthrob Andrew Rannells happily played along, although he doesn’t currently qualify as a bachelor. “I have a boyfriend, so I already have the ideal mate,” the angel-faced actor beamed.

Well, Andrew, if you love him, let him go. If he returns to you, it was meant to be. If he doesn’t, the rest of us boys potentially have a shot at you once again.

The post Bruce Vilanch Attends Premiere Of ‘The Comeback’ first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Two-time Tony Award winner Sutton Foster and The Book of Mormon Tony nominee Andrew Rannells are among the performers who will take part in the 29th annual Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event (S.T.A.G.E.), Broadway, My Way, April 6 at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills.

The one-night-only performance will benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles, one of the largest non-profit AIDS service organizations in the U.S. that provides bilingual direct services, prevention education and leadership on HIV/AIDS-related policy and legislation.

Other Broadway stars scheduled to appear include Patrick Cassidy (42nd Street), Carole Cook (42nd Street), Karen Culliver (The Phantom of the Opera), Tyne Daly (Master Class), Davis Gaines (The Phantom of the Opera), Florence Henderson (The Girl Who Came to Supper), Shirley Jones (42nd Street), Jane Lanier (Guys and Dolls), Vicki Lewis (Chicago), Kimberly Locke (“American Idol”), Tom Lowe, Pat Marshall (The Pajama Game), Patricia Morison (The King and I), Janis Paige (Mame), Madison Claire Parks, Valarie Pettiford (Fosse), Andrew Samonsky (Scandalous),James Snyder (Cry-Baby), Bruce Vilanch (Hairspray) and JoAnne Worley(The Drowsy Chaperone).

Additional performers will be announced at a later date.

Foster received Tony Awards for her performances in Anything Goes and Thoroughly Modern Millie. She also originated roles in Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone and Young Frankenstein and currently stars in the ABC Family series “Bunheads.”

Rannells has also appeared on Broadway inHairspray and Jersey Boys and currently stars in the Golden Globe-winning HBO comedy series “Girls” as well as NBC’s “The New Normal.”

The Saban Theatre is located at 8440 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, CA. For more information and tickets, visit StageLA.com or APLA.org/Stage.

The post Bruce Vilanch, Sutton Foster, and More Set for West Coast Broadway, My Way Benefit first appeared on We Got Bruce!.