The first ever Sheila Ardies Trophy for Musical Theatre was presented at the Southeastern Manitoba Festival Gala Thursday evening.

The winners of 28 festival categories performed at Tuesday’s gala and received their trophies.

After nearly 30 years being involved in the festival as both a performer and a teacher, Sheila Ardies has announced she is moving to BC. The festival decided to rename the trophy for the musical theatre grades B and up after Sheila Ardies. She notes she is very honoured, but this came as a huge surprise.

"That blew me out of the water. I did not see that coming. When Michelle announced it, I thought it was a joke. It was so honouring, I had already told everybody I am not crying anymore and then they went and did that. That is incredibly honouring."

Ardies says a lot has changed since she began being involved with the festival including incredible growth in all categories.

"It has been an amazing ride actually. I told people that I came here with one musical theatre book to my name and now I think I have 50 books and that is all because of this festival. It has been great, even here in the other disciplines, to see kids that are small and I am thinking ‘we are going to see them on world stages, wow’."

Ardies says she is going to miss the festival but it is in good hands.

The best of the best festival participants got the chance to take the stage at the gala and put on an incredible show. Below are all the trophy winners.