RHINEBECK, N.Y.: On April 29, the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat announced the 24 writers of nine new musicals that will receive weeklong residencies in the Hudson Valley this summer, June 22-Aug. 24. The writers and their shows are:
- Pete White and Fermin Suero, Jr., Bludline: A Hip-Hop Odyssey
- Douglas J. Cohen and Cheryl L. Davis, Barnstormer
- Zina Goldrich, Marcy Heisler, Denis Jones, and Brad Hennig, Stage Mother
- Rona Siddiqui, Pia Wilson, and Lynn Rosen, Rattle The Cage
- Dylan MarcAurele and Mike Ross, Lewis Loves Clark
- Jared Corak, Christopher Anselmo, and Addie Gorlin-Han, Princess Kay of the Milky Way
- Tommy Newman and Jaime Lozano, Roja
- Rudy Percival and Sam Woof, Maison Mac
- Samora la Perdida, Mobéy Lola Irizarry, Matthew Zwiebel, and Josiah Handelman, Spanglish Sh!t
Created in 2011, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat provides weeklong residencies for musical theatre writers to develop their musicals in the Hudson Valley. Musicals developed in Rhinebeck had productions at the Public Theater, Barrington Stage Company, Paper Mill Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, and Playwrights Horizons.
NEW YORK CITY: On April 28, 2025 Tony Award Honors for Excellence in the Theatre were announced ahead of the season’s nominations. Celia Keenan-Bolger will receive the 2025 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award for her advocacy work through the arts. Harvey Fierstein will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Receiving Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre will be longtime PBS program Great Performances, Goodspeed Musicals executive director Michael Price (the longest-running executive director of an American theatre), New 42 (the company behind New Victory Theater and New 42 Studios), and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: New inductees to the College of Fellows of the American Theatre were initiated in a gala presentation on Sunday, April 27 at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. The 2025 class of new fellows includes Daniel Banks, Soyica Diggs Colbert, Andre De Shields, Kristoffer Diaz, J. Ellen Gainor, Gregg Henry, Robert Hupp, Joan Lipkin, David Milch, Caridad Svich, Constanza Romero Wilson, and August Wilson (posthumously inducted on what would have been his 80th birthday). Harvey Young of the 2021 class was the moderator for the 2025 investiture. At the presentation, De Shields sang a rendition of “Believe in Yourself” from The Wiz.
OAKLAND, CALIF.: On April 23, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation named San Francisco-based and internationally recognized storyteller, playwright, producer, director, and performer Brenda Wong Aoki as its 2025 theatre fellow and one of the four recipients of its Bay Area Rainin Arts Fellowship. The fellowship honors visionary Bay Area artists with unrestricted grants of $100,000 and tailored resources for their needs and goals. Launched in 2021 and administered by United States Artists, it recognizes artists who push creative boundaries, anchor local communities, and advance the arts.
Wong Aoki’s interdisciplinary practice spans theatre, symphony, contemporary dance, world music, taiko, jazz ensemble, film, and interactive museum installation. Her work draws from her training in traditional Japanese theatre forms of Noh and Kyogen, her lived experience, and her family’s 127-year history in San Francisco. She was the first nationally recognized Asian Pacific storyteller in the U.S., and her works are archived in the American Folklife Collection at the Library of Congress. In 1997, she co-founded First Voice, one of only two organizations in the U.S. dedicated to presenting and producing intercultural performance works. She has been an artist-in-residence at over 100 universities worldwide and was a University of California Regents Scholar. She taught one of the first Asian American Women’s courses at San Francisco State University and is a founding faculty member of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University.
NEW YORK CITY: On April 22, Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the nonprofit foundation of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), announced the recipient and winners of the 2025 Barbara Whitman Award. Director and cultural worker Autumn Angelettie is the recipient of the Whitman Award. The finalists are NYC-based transsexual transdisciplinary theatre director and creator Dmitri Victor Barcomi; Fran de Leon, a director, actor, writer, and educator born in Downtown L.A. and raised in Hollywood and Manila; Emily Lyon, director, Hedgepig Ensemble artistic director, dramaturg and co-creator of Expand the Canon; and theatre director and teaching artist Caitlin Ryan O’Connell. Established by producer Barbara Whitman in 2021, the award recognizes a woman, trans, or non-binary director who has developed a clear and distinctive artistic voice and demonstrated unique vision in their theatrical work. The winner receives $10,000 and finalists receive $1,000 in unrestricted awards.
CINCINNATI: The Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) has announced that Shaina Taub will receive its 2025 EdTa Founders’ Award during its Theatre Education Conference (TEC) co-located with the International Thespian Festival, June 22-24 in Bloomington, Ind. The award recognizes individuals whose work has made a profound impact on the growth and development of theatre education, research, and practice.
LOS ANGELES: The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, celebrating L.A. theatre’s 2024 season, were presented in a ceremony on April 21. Companies with several wins were L.A. newcomer company Giggle Sticks Productions, which received four awards for its production of Reefer Madness: The Musical, including production, ensemble performance, orchestration/music direction, and choreography; Victory Theatre Center and Son of Semele, receiving three awards for Crevasse’s lead performance, lighting design, and visual effects design; and Echo Theater Company, which received three awards for direction, featured performance, and original writing for Abby Rosebrock in Dido of Idaho.
Additional awards went to East West Players’ Pacific Overtures, with two awards for orchestration/music direction and costume design; Pasadena Playhouse’s Kate, which earned Kate Berlant the award for solo performance; A Noise Within’s The Piano Lesson, which received the McCulloh Award for Revival, and The Skin of Our Teeth, receiving a nod for sound design; the tour of Kimberly Akimbo at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, receiving awards for writing – adaptations and score (music and lyrics); Geffen Playhouse’s Fat Ham, winning awards for writing – adaptation and visual effects design; and Road Theatre Company’s Mercury, winning for set design.
CHICAGO: On April 17, Chicago’s Jeff Awards announced Hershey Suri and Adisa Williams as its 2024 class of Jeff Impact Fellows. The fellowships, which began in 2023, award two early-career theatre artists of color with $10,000 each towards their professional work, education, and further development in the Chicago theatre community.
Hershey Suri is a first-generation Sikh Indian theatrical storyteller passionate about exploring the intersection between sociology and the law, who plans to use theatre as a vehicle to reimagine the criminal justice system with her Jeff Impact Fellowship. She produced and directed the first South Asian version of Next to Normal with the South Asia Institute and PopUp! Productions. A current student at the University of Chicago Law School, she plans to “marry” her law experience with the creative endeavors of PopUp! Productions and others producing works that push for social change (based on Columbia University Law School and Broadway Alliance’s collaboration model).
Adisa Williams is a Jamaican American comedy writer and performer who, with the Jeff Impact Fellowship, plans to record a comedy album of her recent show at the Annoyance Theatre, stage another production showcasing neurodivergent talent, and take her show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As one of 13 featured performers in the CBS 2023 Showcase, her comedic short Ashay snagged nominations for two national film festivals. She draws comedic inspiration from her childhood in Jamaica, growing up as an eldest daughter in an immigrant family with queer neurodiversity. To bring more visibility for “out” autistic comedians and expand that to queer, immigrant people of color, Adisa’s vision is to enrich the comedic landscape by promoting greater representation of neurodivergent artists of color.
AUSTIN: On April 16, the 2025 Heller Awards for Young Artists, for Texas high schools, were presented by the Long Center for the Performing Arts, in partnership with Texas Performing Arts and Impact Arts. The event honored over 400 students participating from 37 schools in 19 categories with training scholarships totaling over $20,000. The winners in leading performance categories who will represent Texas at the National High School Musical Theatre Awards (the Jimmy Awards) on June 23 at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre are Walker Wallace from Round Rock High School and Raegan Gonzales from Weiss High School. All of the nominees in both categories had a song performance master class with Adam Roberts to begin preparations for required submission materials.
