NEW YORK CITY: The Dramatists Guild Foundation, in partnership with The Lillys, have selected Brooklyn-based writer and actor Brittany K. Allen and playwright, performer, and scholar-artist Anterior Leverett as the 2026 recipients of the Hansberry-Lilly Fellowship. The Hansberry Fellowship was created by Julia Jordan and Lynn Nottage for the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative. The award celebrates the late playwright Lorraine Hansberry as part of the Lillys’ ongoing mission for racial and gender equity in American theatre.
“Their voices are so alive, their theatrical concerns so immediate, their dive into the complexity of human relationships so complete,” said Pulitzer-winning playwright Eboni Booth, who selected this year’s recipients. “It was the best thrill to encounter these two writers exploring what it means to be human during these chaotic, fragile times.”
The fellowship provides a three-year stipend of $25,000 awarded annually to two women or female-identifying playwrights of color currently enrolled or accepted at a MFA degree program in playwriting. The award acknowledges both the financial demands of graduate school and the financial disparity based on both gender and identity. In addition to three years of financial support, the fellowship also ensures close mentoring of other working theatre professionals.
Brittany K. Allen is a Brooklyn-based writer and actor whose plays have been produced and developed by Manhattan Theatre Club, Clubbed Thumb, Ensemble Studio Theatre, WPLab, Portland Center Stage, Jungle Theatre, Studio Theatre, and KC Rep. She is an alumna of EST/Youngblood, the Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater, and the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages. Her awards include the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation Comedic Playwriting Prize.
Anterior Leverett is a playwright, performer, and scholar-artist based in New York. She received her BA in Theatre and Performance Studies from Kennesaw State University and an MA in Africana Studies from Georgia State University. From 2023-2025, she was the Rosalind Ayers-Williams scholarship recipient through Working Title Playwrights. She was a 2023-24 member of Alliance Theatre Lead Reiser Artist Lab, and a 2024 SheATL Finalist. Her play Yanni Stone & the Honeypot Trap was selected for the 2022-23 Synchronicity Theatre Stripped Bare New Play Incubator Project, and a National Black Theatre Micro Development Lab. Anterior is a member of the 2028 Columbia University Playwriting cohort.
SARASOTA COUNTY, FLA., and NEW YORK CITY: The Hermitage Artist Retreat has announced a new partnership with Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) to support the development of new musicals commissioned by MTC by providing space, time, and inspiration to develop these new works at the Hermitage. Through these commission-specific residencies, MTC and the Hermitage aim to support visionary artists in developing ambitious new work that reflects the richness, complexity, and diversity of contemporary storytelling.
The first two musicals commissioned through this initiative are The Orange Grove, with a book by Lindsey Ferrentino and music by Sam Beam of Iron and Wine, for a modern retelling of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard set in an orange grove in Florida on the brink of collapse; and It’s All Relative, with a book by Sofya Levitsky-Weitz and music and lyrics by Benjamin Velez, about Einstein and his first wife and collaborator Mileva Mari as they gather friends for a series of jam sessions exploring the nature of the universe and humanity’s place within it.
The tuition-free fellowship will provide participants with an immersive week of workshops, mentorship, peer exchange, professional development, and artistic collaboration. Fellows will be able to create new work while focusing on craft, expand their professional networks, and engage with the broader theatre ecosystem.
NEW YORK CITY: Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have announced the 2026 Science and Technology Project New Play Commissions. For more than 25 years, the EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project has developed over 300 plays that challenge and broaden the view of science in the popular imagination. The recipients and plays are:
- Aditya Joshi’s The Doves, about the historic Doves Press, which restored beauty to the mechanized process of book printing.
- Amy B Tiong’s Sidewalk Babies, about Dr. Martin Couney’s “incubator babies,” premature newborns in heated glass chambers.
- Becca Schlossberg’s The Kellogg Bros, about Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a superstar American physician and leader of the Battle Creek Sanitorium, and his brother Will.
- Daria Miyeko Marinelli’s Moonshot, which follows four generations of an aggressively STEM family as they debate ideas and fight to accelerate an idea from science fiction to climate intervention possibility.
- Dylan Guerra’s The Ring Around Us, a kaleidoscopic depiction of the boundaries between emotion and disaster that chronicles the lead-up and fall-out from the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
- Julian Mesri’s A Scratch, A Scratch, a punk rock opera about Mary Wortley Montagu, whose bravery helped pave the way for modern vaccination.
- Libby Carr’s DRIVE, a heist comedy about politicized healthcare and medical misogyny.
- Rachel Lin’s Becoming Magnetic, about a propietary manifestation process backed by neuroscience, the commercialization of belief, and what it costs to manifest our dreams.
- Susan Yassky’s Vesuviana, about a passionate archaeogeneticist on her single-minded quest to uncover the true history of Pompeii’s famous plaster casts.
- Yide Cai’s Glass Ark, about the 1961 Biosphere 2 glass dome and its fascinating collision of scientific research, human ego, and media spectacle.
MINNEAPOLIS: The Playwrights Center has announced its 2026-27 season McKnight Playwriting Fellows for mid-career playwrights living and working in Minnesota. They are MK Tuomanen, who returns to the Playwrights’ Center after their 2025 Terrence McNally Award-winning play Night Science was developed at Playwrights’ Center as a 2023-25 Jerome Fellow; and queer Afro-Latine playwright, producer, and teaching artist Rachel Lynett, who hopes to develop a full play and connect with a community she adores, and aims to be a full-time writer by 2028.
The Playwrights’ Center also announced its 2026-27 McKnight Theater Artists, which supports mid-career theatre artists other than playwrights in Minnesota. They are costume and scenic designer Sarah Bahr, who aims to create meaningful mentorship opportunities for emerging theatre artists; Minnesota-based music director, composer, orchestrator, and performer Jason Hansen, who will focus on theatre orchestration and composing; and actor, director, playwright, and educator Will Sturdivant, who will focus on education and build audition workshops for Twin Cities high school students.
Rounding out the cohort is the third annual McKnight National Residency and Commission recipient, which invites an established playwright from outside of Minnesota to work within its theatre ecosystem. This year’s recipient is Andrea Assaf, a nationally recognized Lebanese American poet, playwright, director, performer, and cultural organizer. In a statement, Assad said she will “finally write a story I have been carrying for too many years, and develop a vision of storytelling that I look forward to sharing with the world.”
NEW YORK CITY: The Candela Playwriting Summer Fellowship, also known as Summer Jam, has selected 18 fellows for its 2026 season, which runs July 12-19, marking the fellowship’s fourth year of expanding access to theatre education, training, and community for playwrights, librettists, lyricists, composers, musicians, theatre writers, and choreopoets of Latin American Caribbean heritage. This year’s fellows include Carl(os) Roa-Cruz LySaundra Janeé, Melina Nakos, Ana Candida Carneiro, Paul Torres Wong, Gretchen Suárez-Peña, Krystal Ortiz, Desi Moreno-Penson, Harrison Acosta, Letitia Bullard-Bosfield, Antonio Del Valle, Jesús Esteban Feliciano Batista (Jesús “Chui”), Chandra Thomas, Ángel García, Nathan Leitão, Smita James, Marcus Scott, and Paloma Sierra.
The tuition-free fellowship will provide participants with an immersive week of workshops, mentorship, peer exchange, professional development, and artistic collaboration. Fellows will be able to create new work, while focusing on craft, expand their professional networks, and engage with the broader theatre ecosystem.
Candela was founded by writer, director, and professor Darrel Alejandro Holnes and is co-directed with Daphnie Sicre, a dramaturg, director, and professor at UC Riverside. Faculty has included Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award, and Obie Award-winning and -nominated artists, among them Quiara Alegría Hudes, Kristoffer Diaz, Dominique Morisseau, David Henry Hwang, Carmen Rivera, Itamar Moses, Michael R. Jackson, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Zhailon Levingston.
NEW YORK CITY: IndieSpace has announced the second cohort of its Little Venue That Could grant program, which provides unrestricted general operating support to New York City-based indie theatre, dance, and multidisciplinary performance venues with budgets under $500,000. This grant gives $10,000 to venues for two consecutive fiscal years, professional development opportunities, and access to IndieSpace’s Advisory and Consulting program. The second cohort includes 3AM Theatre, Court Square Theatre, Dancing Crane Georgian Cultural Center, Ecuadorian American Cultural Center, Life World, Modega, Montez Press Radio, MOtiVE Brooklyn, New Dance Alliance, Purgatory, Spotlight Studios, the MakersSpace, the New Stage Performance Space, the RAT NYC, the Waterfront Museum & Showboat Barge, Theaterlab, and WOW Cafe Theater.
Priority was given to venues in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island; venues whose NEA funding was withdrawn or terminated; venues who were established by and serving historically excluded artists; and venues who demonstrate value-driven work through community impact, board and staff diversity, and accessibility.
NEW YORK CITY: The Parent Artist Advocacy League (PAAL Theatre) has announced the third year of recipients of the LaNeshe Miller-White BIPOC Org Care Fund Award, which provides direct support to BIPOC-led organizations and builds sustainable conditions for artist parents and caregivers. Nine BIPOC-led arts organizations across the United States have received $1,000 to support parents and caregivers with their artistic and administrative communities.
The 2026 recipients include Diaspora DNA Story Center, a cultural hub exploring origin stories and collective memory; Directors Gathering, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit supporting theatre directors through community, resource-sharing, and peer advocacy; Artists at Play, a company producing theatrical work centered on the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American experience while supporting underrepresented theatre artists and audiences in Los Angeles; Revolution Shakespeare, which develops adaptations and collaborative spaces inspired by Shakespeare; JACK, an organization supporting experimental work in art and activism; Bridgyia, a bilingual performing arts school and cultural hub focused on American and Chinese cross-cultural training; the Sol Project, which develops and uplifts work by Latine playwrights and artists of color; Theatre Horizon, a company dedicated to fostering empathy and inclusion through storytelling and arts education; and Power Street Theatre, an organization dedicated to art for social change by investing in creative thought leaders, multidisciplinary artists, and community voices through prioritizing representation, accessibility, and education.
NEW YORK CITY: The Stage Managers’ Association has announced its 2026 Del Hughes Awards for lifetime achievement in the art of stage management. This is the 26th year of the Del Hughes Awards, named after stage manager Del Hughes, whose career spanned stage management on Broadway and television. The award is selected from nominations submitted by industry members.
The 2026 lifetime achievement honorees include stage managers Jill Gold, Beverly Jenkins, and Ira Mont. In addition to these awards, the SMA honored Nancy Uffner with the Founders Award for her prolific career as a leading educator and production stage manager and for her service to the industry. This year’s Special Recognition Award honored Jon Goldman and W. Wilson Jones for their contribution in growing the SMA’s web presence in the early years of the internet.
The Stage Managers’ Association of the United States (SMA) is the only national professional organization for working stage managers across the United States. They work to recognize, advocate for, and provide continued education and networking opportunities for stage managers across the country.
Jill Gold will be the resident stage manager of L.A.’s Center Theatre Group starting Sept. 1, where she earned her Equity card in 1984. She has built a career at legendary Los Angeles venues like Geffen Playhouse, as well as Off-Broadway. Jill teaches stage management at Occidental College and UCLA and coauthored the 11th edition of Stage Management with Lawrence Stern for Routledge Press.
Beverly Jenkins is a Tony-winning stage manager currently working as the production supervisor for the Broadway and touring productions of The Outsiders. She has managed numerous shows, including The Piano Lesson, Hadestown, and In the Heights. Beverly serves on the board of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Beyond the Stage Door and co-founded Broadway & Beyond: Access for Stage Managers of Color.
Ira Mont’s career began in TYA, stock, regional, and Off-Broadway theatre. 20+ Broadway credits include Love! Valour! Compassion!, Rodgers+Hammerstein’s Cinderella, The Sound of Music, The Norman Conquests, A Little Night Music, CATS, Jagged Little Pill, and The Producers. Mont taught MFA stage management at Columbia University for 15 years.
Nancy Uffner’s career spans regional theatre, dance, and opera across the U.S., national tours, event management, and education. She has taught at the University of Michigan for 20 years, where she was honored with the UM School of Music, Theatre & Dance Teaching Excellence Award.
Jon Goldman got his Equity card at the Ordway Music Theatre in St. Paul in the mid-1990s. After relocating to Palo Alto in 2002, he joined the SMA and spent three years as resident SM at TheatreWorks. He moved to NYC in 2005, working Off-Off and Off-Broadway before serving as PSM for Fela!, which transferred to Broadway. Goldman is currently serving as Playbill’s Chief Technology Officer.
W. Wilson Jones became a professional member of SMA in 1988. Since 1996, he has stage managed dozens of world premieres, and workshops with the American Opera Projects. He undertook the development of a comprehensive website for the SMA in 2000 and recently retired as an associate curator from the NYU Libraries faculty in 2016.
CARDIFF, WALES: The inaugural ANNWN Prize has been awarded to Colored (Noire), an immersive theatrical Civil Rights experience exploring the story of Claudette Colvin. Created by Pierre-Alain Giraud, Stéphane Foenkinos, and Tania De Montaigne, the piece blends live arts, digital storytelling, and cutting-edge technology to create a narrative-driven augmented reality. ANNWN Prize winners receive £20,000 and a bespoke residency to support the development of new work.
In Colored (Noire), participants are equipped with AR headsets to step into 1950s Alabama for the story of 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat on a bus nine months before Rosa Parks famously did the same. Shortly before her passing earlier this year, Colvin shared a message with the artists that resonates throughout the work: “Wherever you are, never give up and always fight back.”
The Annwn Prize is the first global award celebrating excellence in immersive storytelling. Chaired by Wales Millennium Centre’s Chairman, Peter Swinburn, the members of the Annwn Prize 2026 jury include artist, filmmaker, and musician Larry Achiampong; critic and writer Arifa Akbar; culture and creative industries leader Sir Peter Bazalgette; musician and community builder Charlotte Church; and writer-director Charlotte Regan.
PORTLAND: The Milagro Artist Fund has announced its 2026-27 grant recipients. Administrated by Milagro Theatre, this fund provides financial and technical support to artists working to benefit the larger Latino community from the Oregon and Southwest Washington regions. In its fifth year, the fund has granted a total of $16,000, the largest amount in the award’s history. More than 15 individual artists were awarded between $500 and $2,000. The 2026-27 grant recipients include the following artists:
Brandon Benitez is an artist, writer, and illustrator. Their project will be a workshop dedicated to making hojalatas, the traditional Latin American aluminum/tin art practice utilized in creating ornaments, frames, and wall art.
Aline Chercover is a queer, Portland-based Colombian illustrator, graphic designer, and multimedia artist. Her project is a launch/exhibition event for Discoteka, her self-published magazine centered around queer women of color in the underground electronic music scene.
Marco “Shorty” Delgado is a Portland-based artist. He created the independent label imprint, Electric Chololand Records in 2024 to support the release of his album Tin Corazón. He will create a compilation series album, Chololandia: Volume Uno, featuring covers of songs by Chicano Rock and recording tracks by Delgado Y Los Conejos De Amor, Joshua Josue, and the Ghost of James Jones.
Joeanally Gonzalez is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker based in East Portland. She’ll work on Forest Park Story Trails, a bilingual performing arts and environmental education project with puppetry and storytelling.
Founded by Eduardo Cruz Torres and Elena Cruz Duran in 2016, Huehca Omeyocan’s mission is to bring communities together through a connection between humanity, nature, and the cosmos. Their project, Offering to Our Healing Ocean, is a cultural community event designed to celebrate the importance of water and ancestral connections through traditional offerings, drumming, music, dances, and educational workshops.
Erica Alexia Ledesma is a visual artist, cultural organizer, and activist from Southern Oregon. Her project, Lo Que Heredamos, is a community-rooted art exhibition honoring the stories, labor, and legacies of intergenerational Latinx artists in the Rogue Valley.
Lynn Mendoza-Khan is a multi-faceted Chicana artist and the founder of the Latinx Choral Project. She is committed to creating culturally specific programming and leadership development opportunities for local Latine artists. She will produce a series of choral performances at community events and musical festivals, including Cantar con los Reyes (a returning Día de los Reyes event). She will also premiere “We Are a Tribe,” a new choral work by Nico Gutierrez, with A Notion, A Scream.
Tiffany Paredes is a Portland-based multidisciplinary artist. Her project is a community event incorporating storytelling, dances, and visual arts performed by members of her weekly class at Vitalidad Movement Arts Center called “Dance Rooted.”
Hampton Rodriguez is a Portland-based visual artist whose practice combines drawing, illustration, painting, and the use of recycled materials in contemporary collage. His project, Aquí Estamos/Here We Are, is a bilingual portrait book honoring individuals whose work and leadership strengthen Oregon’s social fabric.
Karen Romero is a writer and performer from San Diego. After performing as part of Milagro’s 2026 Fertile Ground Festival, her project will be the production of a second play in the festival’s series, which explores nature in a bilingual, interactive experience featuring puppets and live music.
Diego Solorio is a filmmaker with roots in Jalisco, Michoacan, and Chihuahua. His project is a narrative short film following a Mexican woman in a narrative that examines sacrifices and the American Dream.
Kristin Tehrani is an artist, storyteller, and songwriter. Her project will be the development of a songbook for the musical When I Was A Mexican: A Bollywood Musical, which explores the racial, cultural, and biological complexities of identity and family.
Yathzi Turcot is a queer multidisciplinary artist. They grew up in Actopan, Hidalgo, Mexico, and graduated from Portland State University with a BA in Art Practices. Her project is an art workshop where the attendees will create their own Repujado, a crafting technique where pieces of aluminum are embossed or debossed.
Yahir Tzec-Carrasco is a Mexican American filmmaker and photographer from Portland. His work centers on documenting local stories in the Pacific Northwest within the Latino community. His project will involve expanding his documentary short, Roll Modelz, into a mid-length film, highlighting the growing movement of women lowriders in Washington state.
X is a first-generation Mexican American multimedia artist, musician, creative director, and community advocate. His project is an immersive, multimedia art exhibition delving into the world of Rojo y Azul, with visitors moving through installations to examine themes of migration, belonging, and self-discovery within contemporary culture.
