NEW YORK CITY: The National Alliance for Musical Theatre has announced 11 recipients of the 2025-26 Frank Young Fund for New Musicals Project Development and Production Grants, which support NAMT member nonprofit theatres in collaborations to create, develop, and produce new musicals, and the seven recipients of the 2025-26 Impact and Exploration Fund, which helps NAMT member theatres pilot new capacity-building programs to advance their missions and build a library of practices and procedures from which other members can learn. The awards total over $100,000.
Frank Young Fund grant recipients receiving between $5,000 and $10,000 are Barrington Stage Company for fuzzy by Will Van Dyke and Jeff Talbott; La Jolla Playhouse for The Heart by Kait Kerrigan, Anne Eisendrath, and Ian Eisendrath; Seattle Repertory Theatre for Freak the Mighty by Ryan Fielding Garrett and Anthony Drewe; Transport Group for Beautiful Jolie Gabor, Her Glamorous Three Daughters, and Always the Happiness Is Life by Michael John LaChiusa; and ZACH Theatre for Zapata: A Folklorico Superhero Musical by Jesse J. Sanchez.
Impact and Exploration Fund grant recipients receiving between $2,000 and $5,000 are Center REP for Lewis Loves Clark by Dylan MarcAurele and Mike Ross; MusiCoLab for Red & Black by Nick Hatcher, Sheridan Merrick, and David Thomas; Prospect Musicals for Songs for Hands on a Thursday by Jay Alan Zimmerman; Theatre Now New York for The Sustain by Alice Jankell, Pamela Weiler Grayson, and Aaron Drescher; TheatreWorks Silicon Valley for The Tell-Tale Heart by Carlos Aguirre; and Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre for Things We Don’t Say by EllaRose Chary and Brandon James Gwinn.
SAN FRANCISCO: PlayGround has announced its 2025-26 Company, including the Writers Pool, Resident Playwrights, and Artist Company. These 160-plus artists will fuel PlayGround’s incubator programs over the next season, fostering the development of more than 150 original short and full-length plays. The 2025-26 Writers Pool includes Linda Ayres-Frederick, Paul Braverman, Robyn Brooks, Madeleine Butler, Melina Cohen-Bramwell, Jediah Craig, Laura Domingo, Garret Groenveld, KT Frances Hartline, Carl Andrew Johnson, Ruth Kirschner, Greg Lam, Justin P. Lopez, Daniel Martinez Jr, Gillian O’Leary, Richard Perez, James Perry, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Jan Probst, Kimberly Ridgeway, George Rose, Sophie Ruf, Sanjit Sengupta, Greg Sigur, Chris Steele, Stan Stone, Lisa Gaye Thompson, and Maury Zeff.
The 2025-26 Resident Playwrights are: from San Francisco, Monique Adams, Madeleine Butler, Laura Domingo, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Daniel Martinez Jr., and Christian Wilburn; from Los Angeles, Summer Broyhill, Amy Ellenberger, Paris Herbert-Taylor, Jonathan Josephson, Mercedes Segesvary, and Baylee Shlichtman; from New York, Saiya Floyd, Howard Ho, Dana Leslie Goldstein, Wade Lawrence Hollomon, Lyra Nalan, and Camron Wright; and from Chicago, Anne Brady, Jessie Bond, alfonzo kahlil, Juliet Kang Huneke, Karissa Murrell Myers, and Katherine Swan.
DENVER: The Colorado Theatre Guild presented its 2025 Henry Awards on July 28, awarding top honors to Curious Theatre Company for best play with Bruce Norris’s Downstate and Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre for best musical with Come From Away. Rocky Mountain Rep won five awards total (including Jeff Duke for outstanding direction with Come From Away and Michael Querio for music direction with The Music Man). The outstanding new play or musical award went to The Reservoir by Jake Brasch, presented by Denver Center for the Performing Arts Theatre Company. TCG member theatres garnering awards included the Arvada Center for Kevin Copenhaver’s costume design of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. For more, see all winners and nominees here.
SARASOTA, FLA.: Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe has announced its seventh consecutive WBTT artist development scholarships, which provide eight young aspiring artists with $2,000 scholarships each, for a total of $16,000 in scholarships.
Musicians receiving scholarships include Jamar Camp, who has played in pit bands at WBTT and received the Kitty and John Cranor Scholarship; Miracle Deveaux, an alumna and counselor in the Stage of Discovery program, who was awarded the Shelley Goldblatt scholarship; Anthony Jackson, who was awarded the Marian Moss Scholarship; and Amillia Samuels, who will perform in this year’s Black Nativity and was awarded the Charles and Susan Wilson scholarship.
Film students receiving scholarships include Jayde Dauley, who has interned with WBTT’s properties artisan manager and received the scholarship named in memory of Dr. Julian Olf by Patricia Vandenberg; Austin Jacobs, who has produced video projections for WBTT mainstage shows and events, and was awarded the Steve and Shari Ashman Scholarship; and Will Mauricette, a MFA candidate at University of Southern California, who received the scholarship named by the Goldblatt family. Canela Vasquez, a journalism student at the University of South Florida, was awarded the scholarship named in memory of Patricia Bode-Brown by Steven Alan Brown.
