MANASOTA KEY, FLA.: The Hermitage Artist Retreat has received a $12 million gift of land and property in Manasota Key by the Morrison and Steans families. The combined properties span six and a half acres and five houses as additional artist accommodations for the Hermitage’s residency program. This gift more than doubles the retreat’s size and capacity.
The properties were originally built by the Vanderbilt family, who settled there in the early 1950s. The Steans and Morrisons acquired the properties from Samuel and Lydia Auchincloss in 1987. For the past four decades, the Steans and Morrisons have used these homes as a retreat for their daughters and their respective families and guests. In recent years, they have invited the Hermitage to host artists-in-residence as their guests when the Hermitage needed overflow accommodations. The properties are located less than half a mile from the Hermitage’s existing historic home, which suffered damage from storms.
Generative artists, writers, and performers are invited by nomination to enjoy multi-week residencies in Manasota Key, where they take time and space in an inspirational setting to develop new works of theatre, music, visual art, literature, dance, and more. The Hermitage has served over 850 artists including 18 Pulitzer Prize winners as well as poet laureates; Guggenheim and MacArthur fellows; and Tony, Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar winners and nominees.
CHICAGO: United States Artists, a 20-year-old arts funding organization, has announced its 2026 fellows. 50 artists across 21 states and 10 disciplines will receive unrestricted $50,000 cash prizes. The organization has awarded more than $53 million since its inception in 2006. This year’s theatre awardees are lighting and projection designer Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew; director, theatremaker, and artistic leader Mei Ann Teo; director Mina Morita; scenic designer Tanya Orellana; and interdisciplinary artist Ty Defoe.
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew is a multidisciplinary lighting and projection designer for theatre, opera, dance, musicals, music performances, installation and immersive experiences and theatre maker based in Woodside, New York. As a designer, she aims to create a visual environment that is organically integrated into the landscape and language of the production.
Mei Ann Teo is a queer, gender-fluid immigrant from Singapore and based in New York, making theatre at the intersection of artistic, civic, and contemplative practice to move culture towards collective liberation. They champion the multiplicity of perspectives of queer, global majority, trans, and femme people. They are the artistic director of new work at Pink Fang.
Mina Morita is a new play director from Kihei, Hawaii who has worked with Australia’s National Theatre of Parramatta and La Boite Theatre, the Guthrie, Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, Magic Theatre, and Crowded Fire. Morita has worked with Susan Soon He Stanton, Qui Nguyen, Anna Deavere Smith, Sanaz Toossi, Dipika Guha, Christopher Chen, Dave Harris, Star Finch, and Idris Goodwin. She is the BOLD resident director and new works producer at Woolly Mammoth.
Tanya Orellana is a scenic designer based in Los Angeles who has designed performance spaces for theatre, opera, and immersive installations. Originally from San Francisco’s Mission District, she is a core member of the award-winning ensemble Campo Santo.
Ty Defoe is a Grammy-winning interdisciplinary story artist, trans futurist, cultural innovator, and a citizen of the Anishinaabe and Oneida Nations, based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work blends Indigenous traditions with contemporary technologies to craft transformative narratives exploring decolonization, environmental justice, and trans liberation.
NEW YORK CITY: The Kleban Foundation has named lyricist Eric Price and librettist Phillip Christian Smith the recipients of the 36th annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre. They each will receive a $100,000 award over two years. The honor, named for late Chorus Line lyricist Edward Kleban, was established in 1988 in his will to support early career theatre writers. Price and Smith will be celebrated at a private ceremony on Feb. 2 at the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), hosted by Richard Maltby Jr. and Maury Yeston and featuring performances of work from both winning writers.
Eric Price is a lyricist and librettist whose works include The Violet Hour, Radioactive, Presto Change-o, Around the World, Hello Out There, Emma, The Sixth Borough, and contributions to Clue and the Apple TV+ series Central Park. Awards include the Fred Ebb Award for Musical Theatre Writing and a Dramatists Guild musical theatre fellowship with Will Reynolds. He was assistant to Broadway icon Hal Prince and received an MFA from NYU.
Librettist Phillip Christian Smith is a resident member of New Dramatists 2023-2030, a Sloan Commission Playwright at Ensemble Studio Theatre, a Dramatists Guild fellow, a Fire This Time Festival playwright, a Fresh Ground Pepper Playground Playgroup member, a Tennessee Williams scholar at Sewanee (current staff), a Roe Green Commission Playwright with Cleveland Playhouse, and a Playwrights Realm and Lambda Literary Fellow. He is a founding member and 1/5th of The Omnivores.
DENVER: Sharyn Rothstein has been named the winner of the David Goldman Prize for New American Plays for her play Bad Books, presented by the National New Play Network (NNPN). The award recognizes outstanding new American work and its impact within the national theatre landscape by sponsoring a Rolling World Premiere each year, selected by Goldman. Rothstein will accept the prize from NNPN managing director Nan Barnett on the opening night of Curious Theatre Company and Local Theater Company’s co-production of Bad Books (Jan. 10-Feb. 1).
Rothstein is an award-winning playwright and television writer. She is a writer and co-executive producer on Orphan Black: Echoes, was a writer/producer for SUITS for five seasons, and developed shows for Apple TV+, AMC, and Bravo. Her plays include an adaptation of Hester Street, By the Water, All the Days, Right to Be Forgotten, The Invested, and Deep Fake, a modern update of My Fair Lady. Bad Books is about a worried mother who comes to the library for what she thinks will be a reasonable, polite discussion about which books are appropriate for her teenage son, and enters into a confrontation with the town librarian who cares deeply about her job and her community. It was first presented at Round House Theatre’s 2023 National Capital New Play Festival, where it also had its world premiere in April 2025.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: The Folger Shakespeare Library has named Adjoa Andoh MBE as the inaugural resident in its new Director’s Residency program, established by Folger director Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper. The residency aims to connect a prominent artist or thinker with the resources of the Folger in order to engage with Shakespeare and the humanities in new and innovative ways. From April 19 through 25, Andoh will be in Washington, D.C., consulting the Folger’s collection, participating in public programs at the Folger, visiting other cultural centers, and working with students. Public programs during Andoh’s residency include a talk on April 19 and a screening of Richard II on April 21.
Andoh is most well-known among American audiences for her role as Lady Danbury in the Netflix TV show Bridgerton and is a highly regarded Shakespearean actor and director who conceived, co-directed, and played the lead in Richard II at Shakespeare’s Globe in the U.K.’s first production with all women of color. She is a theatre instructor, actor, director, writer, and mentor for BBC Radio Drama.
NEW YORK CITY: The Farm Theater, which develops early-career artists through workshops, productions, and mentoring, has awarded playwright Nandita Shenoy the 2026-27 College Collaboration Project commission. Through this commission, an early-career playwright works with multiple schools to write a full-length play with at least five characters under the age of 30, that each school will independently produce throughout the academic year. Past commissions include Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is The Villain. Shenoy will collaborate with students at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky and the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.
Nandita Shenoy is an actor and writer in New York City. Plays include ESSPY (N.J. Rep), The Future Is Female… (Flint Rep), and Washer/Dryer, which she starred in Off-Broadway. Awards include the 2014 Father Hamblin Award in Playwriting, a 2018 Mellon Creative Research Fellowship, a 2022 Hermitage Fellowship, and a 2024 Green Box Arts Residency.
NEW YORK CITY: TDF has announced the 2026 TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards, which celebrate the accomplishments of the theatrical design community and will be presented at its gala on Monday, April 13 at TAO Downtown.
Oscar, Emmy, and two-time Tony-winning costume designer Paul Tazewell will be honored with the TDF/Irene Sharaff Award for Sustained Excellence in Costume Design, which is bestowed annually to a costume designer who has achieved great distinction in designs for theatre, opera, dance, and/or film and whose work embodies the qualities of excellence represented in Sharaff’s lifework.
Scenic and costume designer and artist John Macfarlane will be honored with the Robert L. B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design, which honors Tobin’s passion, respect, and esteem for the art of theatrical design.
Two-time Tony-nominated costume designer Jennifer Moeller (known for Camelot at Lincoln Center Theater and Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s) will receive the TDF/Irene Sharaff Ascending Artist Award, which is presented to a promising young designer whose work has come to fruition.
Metropolitan Opera hair and wig designer Tom Watson will receive the TDF/Irene Sharaff Artisan Award, which recognizes an individual or company that has made an outstanding supportive contribution in the field of costume technology.
NEW YORK CITY: Page 73 Productions has announced its 2026 writers group and playwriting fellowship. Writers Group members meet at the Page 73 offices twice a month to share their newest pages. Every member receives a $3,000 stipend. Within the cohort, Adin Lenahan has been named the 2026 fellow, receiving an unrestricted cash award of $20,000 and a development budget of up to $10,000 to develop one or more new plays. The fellowship, which annually supports a playwright who has yet to have an Off-Broadway premiere in New York City, is in its 24th year.
The cohort also includes Abigail C. Onwunali, a Nigerian-American playwright, performer, and poet; Aditya Joshi, a theatre artist and filmmaker from Kansas City, Missouri; Alexa Derman, a Brooklyn-based playwright and screenwriter; Benjamin Benne, whose plays include Alma and at the very bottom of a body of water; Dhari Novel, a queer, Black, Caribbean, and Harlemite playwright, performer, and educator who explores the incoherence of race, the failures of gender, and inherited ways of being; Jucuby Johnson, a New York-based playwright, actor, and screenwriter from Jacksonville, Florida, and a second-year playwright in the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program; and Mallory Jane Weiss, a New Jersey-born and Brooklyn-based queer female playwright with a penchant for comedy.
NEW YORK CITY: New Georges has announced its 2026 Cycle 11 Audrey resident artists for its project-based new works development program. In collaboration or individually, residents design their own processes, work in The Room and gather monthly as a mini-community. The residents are Aileen Wen McGroddy and Ro Reddick; EllaRose Chary and Alex Keegan; Emma Watkins, Lauren Keating, and Doaa Ouf; Kate Tarker; Lila Rachel Becker and Mel Hsu; Dina Vovsi and Liz Appel; Mia Rovegno; Rehana Lew Mirza and Miranda Ferriss Jones; and Thalia Sablon.
NYACK, N.Y.: Phoenix Theatre Ensemble has announced the 2025 award recipients for the 4th annual Phoenix Festival: Live Arts in Nyack, a multi-week performing arts festival featuring theatre, music, comedy, and dance. Productions honored include Drilling Company’s Larry Parks’ Day in Court by Ron Marquette for outstanding production, Firebird Project and Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s The Crucible by Arthur Miller for outstanding revival, the Blessed Unrest’s Sermons on Miranda Lambert by Jenn Allen for outstanding unique theatrical performance (musical), and Leo Lion’s Help Me! for outstanding unique theatrical performance (non-musical).
Winning performers are Tracey Conyers Lee in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill – Redux by Lanie Robertson, produced by Nomad Theatrical Productions; Joseph Medeiros in The Odyssey in Ancient Greek (Book II) by Homer; and Reggie Wilson in Sugar Ray by Laurence Holder, produced by Reginald Wilson; and the ensemble of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, presented by Shakespeare in a Parking Lot. Karen Case Cook earned outstanding direction of a play for Afterplay by Brian Friel at Phoenix Theatre Ensemble. Recognized venues were the Angel Nyack for outstanding nonprofit venue and Rose Hall at Prohibition River for outstanding business venue.
NEW YORK CITY: On Dec. 4, IndieSpace hosted The Big Give at Judson Memorial Church and handed out $1,000 grant checks to 71 recipients of their annual Pay Your People Grants. Grantees were chosen by lottery from 327 eligible applicants. Danza Espana – The American Spanish Dance Theatre, Hi-ARTS, INTAR Theatre, The Regina Opera Company, Inc., WaxFactory, and Working Theater were named the recipients of the Deep Roots Grant, which is awarded to companies that have been working in indie theatre for more than 25 years. Additionally, Indie Theater Venue Grants have been awarded to 16 Cowries, Inc., Bechdel Project, Center For Performance Research, Chain Theatre, FRIGID New York, Mabou Mines Development Foundation, Inc., Off The Lane, Salvatore LaRussa Dance Theatre, the Makers’ Ensemble, and the New Stage Performance Space.
