Betty Award

Betty Mitchell Awards were created in 1998 to celebrate and honour outstanding achievement in Calgary's professional theatre community. It is commonly called the Betty Award and is named for Calgary theatre pioneer Dr. Betty Mitchell.

Awards
The awards ceremony for the 2018–19 season was held on June 24 at the Vertigo Theatre in Calgary.

In 2019, Pakistani-Canadian actor Ahad Raza Mir, the first Pakistani actor to play Hamlet in Canada, won the Betty for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Drama for his performance of the title role In that same year Tiffany Ayalik became the first Inuit recipient of a Betty Award.

Categories
Awards are given in the following categories:


 * Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble
 * Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
 * Outstanding Lighting Design
 * Outstanding Set Design
 * Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
 * Outstanding Costume Design
 * Outstanding Sound Design or Composition
 * Outstanding Choreography or Fight Direction
 * Outstanding Musical Direction
 * Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Comedy or Musical
 * Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Comedy or Musical
 * Outstanding New Play
 * Outstanding Direction
 * Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Drama
 * Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Drama
 * Outstanding Production of a Musical
 * Outstanding Production of a Play

Statue update
The original Betty Mitchell Award statue, designed by local Calgary sculptor, Petronella Overes, was inspired by the geography surrounding Calgary. It was a steel base containing a glass monolith with motifs of mountains and prairies. For the 10th anniversary of the awards in 2007 she redesigned it replacing the steel base with powder coated aluminum and increased the contrast in the tone and texture of the awards metal and glass.

The Award received its most recent design update in 2014 when the Overes design was replaced with a multi-colour teardrop-shaped glass sculpture created by a local glass blowing collective, Bee Kingdom Glass. Each one is unique, as they are hand-blown.