NEW YORK CITY: Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the nonprofit foundation of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), has announced the recipients of the 2024-25 Joe A. Callaway Awards: Zhailon Levingston, recognized for excellence in direction for Table 17 at MCC Theater, and Darrell Grand Moultrie, recognized for excellence in choreography for Goddess at the Public Theater. The finalists for excellence in direction are Ken Rus Schmoll for I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan at Atlantic Theater Company and Whitney White for Liberation at Roundabout Theatre Company. Awarded every New York City Off-Broadway season, the Joe A. Callaway Awards are the only awards granted to directors and choreographers by a committee of their peers.
Zhailon Levingston is a Louisiana-raised storyteller, director, and activist. With Bill Rauch, he co-directed Cats: The Jellicle Ball in 2024 at Perelman Arts Center, which earned him an Obie Award and Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations. At 27 years old, as the director of Chicken and Biscuits, he became the youngest Black director in Broadway history. He is a board member of the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, artistic director of Inheritance Theater Project, and co-created a “Theatre of Change” course at Columbia University School of Law.
A Princess Grace Choreography fellow, Darrell Grand Moultrie’s work includes Fat Ham on Broadway and the Public Theater, Goddess and Good Bones at the Public, Saturday Church at New York Theatre Workshop, 12th Night and Merry Wives at Shakespeare in the Park, Disney’s Aida in the Netherlands, Daddy at the New Group, Space Dogs at MCC Theater, Witness Uganda at American Repertory Theater, Sugar in Our Wounds at MTC, Invisible Thread at Second Stage, Redwood at Portland Center Stage, Evita and Pride and Prejudice at Kansas City Rep, and El Publico at Teatro Real. Moultrie was Beyonce’s choreographer on her Mrs. Carter world tour. A native New Yorker, Moultrie is a graduate of P.S. 144, Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts, LaGuardia High School and Juilliard.
NEW YORK CITY: The American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association has announced writer and producer Citlali Pizarro (she/her) as the fourth annual Edward Medina Prize for Excellence in Cultural Criticism recipient. She received the award on Nov. 8 during the ATCA conference in New York. Pizarro will receive a cash award, a complimentary annual ATCA membership, and a stipend to offset attendance costs for the November 2025 ATCA conference. ATCA created the award in 2022 to honor their colleague Edward Medina and to recognize United States theatre critics and journalists from historically underrepresented groups who write about theatre.
Pizarro is a New York-based writer and theatre producer with bylines in 3Views, American Theatre, Current Affairs and HowlRound. In 2023, she was named a TCG Rising Leader of Color in Arts Journalism and a fellow at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute. In 2021-22, she was a PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow, a Shadowproof Marvel Cooke Fellow for abolition journalism, and the inaugural Lin-Manuel Miranda Family Fellow in Connectivity at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. She currently works in the Public Theater’s producing department.
CRAIOVA, ROMANIA: The International Association of Theatre Critics (AICT/IATC) has announced that Maria Shevtsova, a renowned scholar on Russian theatre, will receive the 2026 Thalia Prize on May 22, 2026, at its World Congress in Craiova, Romania. The Thalia Prize is AICT/IATC’s award for outstanding contributions to theatre criticism, given to critics, theoreticians, and practitioners who have shaped global understanding of theatre in different cultural environments, politics, and aesthetics.
Shevtsova is a professor emerita of Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work is in teaching, research, and scholarship on past and present Russian theatre, contemporary European theatre directors and companies, and interdisciplinary theories of sociology of theatre. Recent books include Rediscovering Stanislavsky (2020), Robert Wilson (second, updated edition 2019), The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2013, co-authored), Directors/Directing: Conversations on Theatre (2009), Sociology of Theatre and Performance (2009), Fifty Key Theatre Directors (2005, co-ed), and Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (2004). She is the editor of New Theatre Quarterly and is on the editorial teams of Stanislavsky Studies and Critical Stages.
ATLANTA: The Drinking Gourd, a national initiative to support the development of plays by Black playwrights, has announced that Stacey Rose, India Nicole Burton, and Nathan Yungerberg have been chosen for its 2025-26 cohort. Rose, based in Charlotte, has been named its commissioned playwright and will receive $10,000 to complete the production draft of a new play. Burton and Yungerberg will also receive support, including a dramaturg and 29-hour workshop development of a play.
Rose’s work celebrates and explores Blackness, Black identity, body politics and the dilemma of life as the “other.” She has held fellowships/residencies with the Arts & Science Council, Dramatists Guild, the Playwrights’ Center, Sundance Theatre Lab, the Goodman Theatre, The Civilians, and Tofte Lake Center. Her work has been presented at The Lark, Amoralists Theatre Company, Rattlestick Theater, Pillsbury House, Barrington Stage Company, and Kansas City Rep.
Burton is an award-winning Chicago director, playwright, deviser, and producer, and a professor of theatre at Chicago State University. She aims to create socially relevant and artistically innovative theatre. Her work has been seen nationally and internationally. She was a part of the New Harmony Project, and the National New Play Network’s New Play Showcase, Producers in Residence, and Bridge Program.
Yungerberg is a Brooklyn-based Afro-surrealist and storyteller who’s written for television (Sesame Street), audio dramas and podcasts (Live from Mount Olympus, CultureVerse), and theatre. His plays have been presented at New York Theatre Workshop, Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, Cherry Lane Theatre, the Apollo Theater, JAG Productions, Roundabout Theatre Company, Alliance Theatre, LAByrinth Theater Company, Crowded Fire Theater, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, The Fire This Time Festival, Blackboard Reading Series, 48 Hours in Harlem, the Playwrights’ Center, and others.
The Drinking Gourd is a consortium of Black theatres focusing resources on the production and development of work by Black playwrights. Their aim is to return stories to the care of Black institutions and build a pathway for Black playwrights work to be seen. Theatres in this year’s cohort are Atlanta’s True Colors Theatre Company; Seattle’s the Hansberry Project; New York’s National Black Theatre; Houston’s The Ensemble Theatre; Memphis’s Hattiloo Theatre; and Cleveland’s Karamu House.
CHICAGO: The Joyce Foundation Culture Program has announced the 2025 Creative Impact Grant recipients. The grant is a one-time unrestricted funding opportunity for artists and organizations that have enriched the Great Lakes region, celebrating their contributions and commitment to ongoing creative practice and programs. Administered by United States Artists, the program awards $10,000 to individual artists and $5,000 to organizations, with a total of $900,000 in unrestricted funding.
Individual artists receiving grants include playwright, director, and professor Luis Alfaro; playwright, director, and educator Andrea Assaf; social impact organizer Marc Bamuthi Joseph; choreographer Camille A. Brown; director, writer, and teacher Sydney Chatman; actor Ty Defoe; actor, writer, singer, and producer Sandra Delgado; playwright Larissa FastHorse; artist, activist, and academic Ricardo Gamboa; producer Marlina Gonzalez; playwright Terry Guest; playwright Naomi Iizuka; playwright and performer Katie Ka Vang; Tarell Alvin McCraney; playwright and actor Lisa Langford; performance artist Kaneza Schaal; and actor Reginald L. Wilson. Theatre organizations include Chicago Children’s Theatre, Children’s Theatre Company, Cleveland Public Theatre, Free Street Theater, and the Goodman Theatre.
NEW YORK CITY: Alliance Theatre and TYA/USA have chosen Helping Hands by Jack Romans and Cameryn Richardson as the Alliance Theatre and TYA/USA TVY Development Program’s inaugural project. This new program offers mentorship, residency, and workshop support to a new Theatre for Very Young Audiences (TVY) show for ages newborn to 5 years. Alliance Theatre will host the show in development and present its workshop production at the TYA/USA Festival and Conference and Woodruff Art Center’s Toddler Takeover Festival in May 2026.
Jack Romans is a theatremaker and educator specializing in puppetry and youth-inclusive theatre, who uses upcycling practices to create puppets, costumes, masks, sets, and instruments that challenge the term “waste” by sparking wonder. Cameryn Richardson is a director, performer, educator, and consultant who’s partnered with schools and cultural institutions across Atlanta to create agency-building arts programs.
Their interactive play is about two friends who disturb a resting trash spirit. Hijinks ensue as they bring audiences along on a journey to upcycle, create, and ultimately, enjoy items typically thrown away. They hope “to eliminate the notion of waste by inciting wonder and inviting agency into play for TVY audiences” by facilitating play and inviting collaborations with local environmental waste programs. They will be in residence at the Alliance during the weeks starting Dec. 8 and May 25, 2026 to develop a workshop production. They will receive $8,000 to cover travel and lodging and support the show’s development.
NEW YORK CITY: The recipients of 21st annual Fred Ebb Award are Sophie Boyce and Veronica Mansour. Awarded by the Fred Ebb Foundation for aspiring musical theatre songwriters, the award will be presented to the duo by Christopher Sieber in a ceremony on Dec. 1 at 54 Below. The Fred Ebb Award recognizes excellence in musical theatre songwriting by a songwriter or songwriting team that has not yet achieved significant commercial success. The prize aims to encourage and support aspiring songwriters to create new works for the musical theatre and includes a $60,000 award. The Fred Ebb Foundation is funded by royalties from Ebb’s vast catalogue of work.
Sophie Boyce is a lyricist and librettist, originally from London. She has recently been honored as a Dramatists Guild fellow, Richard Rodgers Award winner, Eric H. Weinberger Librettist Award winner, Eugene O’Neill NMTC winner, and finalist for the Kleban Prize. She has an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch and is an alum of the BMI Bookwriters Workshop.
Veronica Mansour is a composer, lyricist, and artist. Awards include the Richard Rodgers Award, Jonathan Larson Grant, Eric H. Weinberger Librettist Award, a Dramatists Guild fellowship, nominee for a Marvin Hamlisch International Music Award, DreamWorks Theatricals, MTI and NBCUniversal Emerging Writer, and a 2023 Write Out Loud contest winner. Her work has been developed with the Lucille Lortel Theatre, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Goodspeed Musicals, the Orchard Project, New York Theatre Barn, the South Carolina New Play Festival, Musical Theatre West, and more. She is a proud member of Maestra, the Dramatists Guild, and BMI. She holds an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch.
NEW YORK CITY: Vineyard Theatre has announced the recipients of the Paula Vogel Award, the Colman Domingo Award, and the Susan Stroman Award. The honors support playwrights, directors, and actors in developing new work. Ro Reddick will receive the Paula Vogel Award, named for the prolific playwright. Reddick is queer Black playwright and singer-songwriter who writes off-kilter comedies, including the recent Cold War Choir Practice. The honor is given annually to an exceptionally promising early career writer; and includes a cash prize, a year-long residency to develop new work, as well as writing space, readings, workshops, and ongoing dramaturgical support.
Keenan Tyler Olphant will receive the Susan Stroman Directing Award, given biennially to an early- or mid-career director and provides recipients with the space, time, and support to develop projects and new collaborations. Oliphant is a founding member of Mixing Bowl Productions, an underground company that focuses on alternative and contemporary musical theatre. As an artistic director, he has produced and directed the devised pieces In-between and Private Parts at the South African National Arts Festival.
Ato Blankson-Wood is the winner of the Colman Domingo Award, given annually to a multifaceted Black male/male-identifying theatre artist to provide support and resources to create new work. Domingo Award recipients are selected directly by Vineyard and Domingo and receive a cash stipend, workshops and other developmental opportunities, access to writing and studio space, mentorship, and ongoing support from Vineyard. Blankson-Wood recently appeared in Kenny Leon’s Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Park, starred in Long Day’s Journey Into Night for Audible, and was nominated for a Tony Award for his role in Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play. Ato had his breakout performance in The Total Bent at the Public.
