As if to prove that anything can go wrong in live theater, nearly everything did at Monday night’s 41st annual Joseph Jefferson Awards ceremony. (See the full list of winners.) Starting with an over-descended curtain in the opening number by the cast of Million Dollar Quartet that briefly cut off the drummer and bass player from the rest of the band, the show was marked by a remarkable number of flubs. Most of the evening’s presenters seemed unrehearsed, leading to bungled sequencing with the PowerPoint projection of nominees’ and winners’ names and to a number of awkward moments waiting for winners who weren’t there. (I counted at least ten no-shows, about a quarter of the total, including Blackbird’s William L. Petersen, Miss Saigon’s Joseph Anthony Foronda and The History Boys‘ designer Brian Sidney Bembridge; also, not a single representative of Steppenwolf was present to accept its best production—large trophy for The Seafarer.) Hosts Elizabeth Ledo and Rob Lindley, too, seemed to be ad-libbing their shtick all evening. They’d have done well to take a cue from 50th-anniversary honorees Second City: Improv in rehearsal, then set the script.

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Our distinguished hero

Ah, the wonders of Chicago spring: schizophrenic temperatures that can ruin any otherwise lovely event, Cubs fans getting back into therapy and the much-anticipated non-Equity Joseph Jefferson nominations. Named for 19th-century actor Jefferson, who spent much of his career playing the titular character in productions of Rip Van Winkle, the Jeff noms’ announcement inevitably brings as much whiplash-inducing, “What were they thinking?” shock value for the talented non-nominees and observers as they do joy to those whose work was honored. This year we consider what they were thinking, and even try to imagine it, in an attempt to figure out what makes the ever-elusive Jeff committee tick.

Here are our attempted-mind-reading guesses for why some of Chicago’s finest got snubbed this year. Again. (The complete list of nominees follows.)

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