LOS ANGELES: The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle (LADCC) has announced its 2025 award winners, who will be honored at a live reception event on April 13, sponsored by the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station Arts complex. Best Production awardees are Cambodian Rock Band at East West Players, Evanston Salt Costs Climbing at Rogue Machine Theatre, and Some Like It Hot at Broadway in Hollywood/Pantages Theatre. The McCulloh Award for Revival goes to Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at A Noise Within. And Steven Robman wins the directing award for Corktown ’39 at Rogue Machine Theatre.
Lead performers honored are Hugo Armstrong for Evanston Salt Costs Climbing; Kasey Mahaffey for One Man, Two Guv’nors (A Noise Within); and Ann Noble for Corktown ’39. The winning featured performer is Alex Morris for Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and Robert Bailey wins a solo performance award for In Some Dark Valley (Moving Arts). Evanston Salt Costs Climbing‘s cast is also recognized for ensemble performance.
Writers awarded are Amy Dellagiarino for Hello, My Name is… at Moving Arts (original writing category), Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin for Some Like It Hot (adaptation), and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman for Some Like It Hot (music and lyrics). Some Like It Hot‘s Casey Nicholaw and Mark Binns are also recognized for choreography and music direction, respectively. Another music direction awardee is Annbrit duChateau for Old Friends at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre.
Winning designers are scenic designer Mark Mendelson (Corktown ’39), lighting designer Anna Watson (Paranormal Activity at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre), costume designer Gregg Barnes (Some Like It Hot), hair and wig designer Nikiya Mathis (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum), sound designer Gareth Fry (Paranormal Activity), visual effects designers Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes (Life of Pi at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre), and Chris Fisher and Jamie Harrison (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at Broadway in Hollywood/Pantages Theatre).
NEW YORK CITY: Sandy Rustin has received the Bechdel Project‘s two-year ROO Residency. The feminist incubator for new plays will provide $5,000 in financial support, an invitation to the Bechdel Project’s annual 3rd Bohemia Artist Retreat with Todd London, studio space for writing or rehearsals, writing retreats in Brooklyn and Germany, dramaturgical mentorship and developmental workshops, and the opportunity to present a public reading at the conclusion of the residency. Rustin will develop a new farce centered on a high-stakes 11-hour sit-in at the offices of the publication Ladies’ Home Journal in 1970.
Sandy Rustin is an actress and playwright. She made her Broadway playwriting debut with the hit farce The Cottage and is the author of the popular stage adaptation of Clue. Her work also includes the award-winning The Suffragette’s Murder.
NEW YORK CITY: The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers has announced the 103rd class of National Medalists in the 2026 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the nation’s longest-running and most prestigious scholarship and recognition program for young artists and writers in grades 7-12. Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is the 2026 Alumni Achievement Award recipient. He will be recognized alongside this year’s national teen medalists at the 2026 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards National Ceremony on June 10, held at Carnegie Hall. The award is given annually to esteemed alumni whose innovative careers have influenced their industries and who credit their Scholastic Art & Writing Award as a pivotal moment in their teenage years, providing confidence and encouragement to explore their creative pursuits.
A Scholastic Writing Award recipient, Jacobs-Jenkins is a Pulitzer and two-time Tony-winning playwright whose plays include Girls, Everybody, War, Gloria, The Comeuppance, Appropriate, Purpose, An Octoroon, and Neighbors. He has taught at Yale, NYU, Juilliard, Hunter College, and the University of Texas-Austin and received honors including USA Artists, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellowships, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award.
LOS ANGELES: IAMA Theatre Company, which is committed to cultivating new voices and nurturing new work, has selected Agyeiwaa Asante as the 2026 recipient of the company’s Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission, sponsored by IAMA patron of the arts Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton).
Asante is a Ghanaian American playwright and administrator based in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area (DMV). Her full-length plays include DAINTY, AGAPE; or The Church Play, and The Half-Sibling Play. She holds commissions from the University of Maryland’s NextNow Festival and Round House Theatre. She is the 2020 recipient of the Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation’s Ollie Award and is a member of the Kilroys Web 2023 and PlayPenn’s Playwrights Cohort. Asante received her BA in theatre from the University of Maryland, College Park, and her MFA in playwriting from UC San Diego.
Now in its ninth year, the Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission was created to nurture emerging playwrights with an emphasis on cultural inclusion and fresh creativity in theatre. This commission supports a writer from an underrepresented community, who may have been minimally professionally produced but has not yet a commercial, Off-Broadway, or Broadway production.
WATERFORD, CONN.: The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center has announced seven new musicals as finalists for its 2026 National Music Theater Conference, selected from 425 submissions and championed by reading teams and artistic staff. They are Fairy Tale (book and lyrics by Adam Gopnik, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa), Goblins & Gates: A Pen and Paper Musical Adventure (book, music, and lyrics by Gonzalo Valencia-Peña and Michael Campbell), if you bury me (book, music, and lyrics by é boylan), Mirror Image (co-written by Laura Winters and JJ Warshaw), MISS AMERICA (book, music, and lyrics by Emma Ashford), Proud Marys (book and lyrics by Jennifer Paz, music and lyrics by Anthony Fedorov), and Redhand Guitar (book by Evan Yionoulis and Mike Yionoulis, music and lyrics by Mike Yionoulis).
MINNEAPOLIS: Theater Latté Da has announced Clare Fuyuko Bierman and Erika Ji as the recipients of the 2026 NEXT Generation Commission, designed to support the creation and development of new musical theatre projects by creative teams that include women artists and artists of color. Fuyuko Bierman and Ji are the writing team on Yoko’s Husband’s Killer’s Japanese Wife, Gloria with Brandy Hoang Collier. Theater Latté Da received over 100 applications for this year’s $20,000 commission.
Clare Fuyuko Bierman is a writer raised in a Japanese-Jewish home in Los Angeles. Bierman’s writing has been developed and supported by the Washington National Opera, the O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, The Civilians, American Opera Projects, the Johnny Mercer Foundation, National Asian Artists Project, Youth Theater Northwest, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Erika Ji is a cross-genre composer-storyteller whose work has premiered at and been supported by Lincoln Center, the O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Public Theater.
SANTA FE, N.M.: The Children’s Theatre Foundation of America (CTFA) has bestowed its 2026 Orlin Corey Medallions on two seminal theatre artists and an inspirational youth theatre whose work exemplifies CTFA’s core values of excellence, innovation, and equity. They are Janet Stanford, Deborah Wicks La Puma, and Mosaic Youth Theatre. Stanford is a producer, director, and playwright who is the founding artistic director of Imagination Stage in Bethesda, Maryland, one of the flagship TYA Theatres in the U.S. Deborah Wicks la Puma is a TYA composer who has worked on some of the most popular titles in the field, including adaptations of Mo Willems’s books. Mosaic Youth Theatre is described as a “dynamic collection of champions for youth, arts, education equity, and Detroit” by CTFA. The honorees will receive their awards during the TYA/USA National Festival and Conference joint awards event at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre on May 29.
