Feldman wins theater award

Andrew Feldman, now a junior at Lawrence Woodmere Academy in Woodmere, took home the top prize at the National High School Musical Theatre Awards, also known as the Jimmy Awards, on June 25 at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre. The Jimmy Awards were named in honor of James M. Nederlander, a theater owner and Broadway producer who died in 2016.

Feldman captured the award for Best Performance by an Actor for playing Frank Abagnale Jr. in LWA’s production of “Catch Me If You Can.” He and Reneé Rapp, of Charlotte, North Carolina, the winner of the Best Performance by an Actress award, each received a $10,000 scholarship, while the other remaining 78 finalists received $3,000 scholarships.

The finalists received a week of training from Broadway professionals at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts before the ceremony. Feldman also won the Carnegie Mellon Pre-College Scholarship, he received an additional $7,500 to attend the Pittsburgh-based university’s six-week summer drama program.

He also won the Broadway Education Alliance’s Roger Rees Award for Best Actor on May 19, which is how he qualified for the Jimmy Awards. Feldman has been a Broadway aficionado since seeing “Beauty and the Beast,” when he was younger and then performing in his first play, a production of “Annie,” at eight.

The shock of winning has still not worn off. “Winning the Jimmy Award is not something I even imagined,” Feldman said. “Well, that’s half true; I imagined it a lot, but I didn’t think it could actually happen! It’s now been about a week and a half and I still don’t believe it.”

Zneefrock Productions, the theater company that Feldman created as a bar mitzvah project in 2014, will perform “Be More Chill” on July 27 at LWA to raise money for the charity, NEXT for Autism.

—Tyler Marko