HAILEY, IDAHO: Sun Valley Playwright’s Residency has announced Pulitzer Prize finalist Talene Monahon as its 2026-27 Resident Playwright. She will write a new play commissioned by the residency, with music by two-time Tony Award nominee Will Butler (Stereophonic and Arcade Fire). Monahon’s Meet the Cartozians is published in the summer 2026 edition of American Theatre.
Through SVPR’s partnership with the Community Library, Monahon will spend October in the Wood River Valley, including dedicated writing time at the historic Ernest and Mary Hemingway House. During her residency, audiences in Sun Valley and Boise will have opportunities to meet Monahon and experience her work through free public programs.
NEW YORK CITY: Manhattan Theatre Club has announced the latest recipients of its Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Initiative commissions for new theatrical works surrounding themes of science, math, and technology. The commissioned writers are writer, performer, and labor organizer Matthew-Lee Erlbach; Nebraska-born Vietnamese playwright Don Nguyen; and Noelle Viñas, a writer and educator from Springfield, Virginia, and Montevideo, Uruguay.
This year’s commissioned plays center the cosmic and technological frontiers of our past, present, and future, as well as the many opportunities and challenges that arise from humanity’s need to explore in pursuit of advancement. Since 2001, MTC has awarded over 100 commissions through the Sloan Foundation Program.
Matthew-Lee Erlbach’s The Moon Treaty of 1979, (or the Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) uses the high-stakes United Nations negotiations over lunar governance as a lens to examine urgent questions about free scientific inquiry, global power, and the future of the human species.
Don Nguyen’s Jimmy Carter and His Telescope is a historical drama that imagines a series of intimate conversations between President Jimmy Carter and his longtime friend astrophysicist Carl Sagan, with their cosmic debates mirroring the crushing earthly crises threatening to destroy Carter’s presidency.
Noelle Viñas’s Mother Tongue is an eerie dramedy, flush with trilingual chaos, grief, and squabbling siblings, who navigate their mother’s newfound independence sparked by the support of an AI-based program named R.A.U.L., which is utilized by state governments to provide companionship to immigrant seniors who speak “dying languages.”
NEW YORK CITY: The Princess Grace Foundation has announced its 2026 award winners and honoraria recipients. Winners will receive $15,000 and those selected for honoraria will earn $1,500, with both being unrestricted cash grants.
The awardees are Anuj Bhutani, nominated by Beth Morrison Projects, receiving the Robert and Gloria Hausman Theater Honor; Kate Eberstadt, nominated by Ars Nova, who received the Gant Gaither Theater Honor; Madison Fiedler, the 2026-27 Princess Grace Award winner in Playwriting/Fellowship at New Dramatists; Sapu-D’jano, nominated by the Juilliard School, who received the Grace Le Vine Theater Honor; Michael Ruiz-del-Vizo, nominated by Queensborough Community College, who received the Fabergé Theater Honor; and Alysia Velez, nominated by Manhattan School of Music, who received the John Gore Theater Honor.
The theatre honoraria are Satya Chávez, nominated by the Goodman Theatre; Lour, nominated by National Queer Theater; Sveta Moroz, nominated by The Imaginists; and Ava Elizabeth Novak, nominated by 2021 Princess Grace Award winner nicHi douglas.
NEW YORK CITY: The Prince Fellowship, in association with Columbia University School of the Arts, has announced that NYC-based producer Timothy Bloom (Off-Broadway’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Cats: The Jellicle Ball) has received the Prince Fellowship, and Seaview creative producer Chase Parker (The Fear of 13, Danya Taymor’s upcoming Spring Awakening revival) has received the Prince/TTLP Fellowship.
The Prince Fellowship was renamed in 2021 to honor producer, director, and T. Fellowship founder Harold Prince, who created the program to help usher in the next generation of creative producers. Selected fellows receive a stipend of $10,000, a $20,000 budget for the development of a new theatrical production, access to courses in Columbia’s MFA Theatre Management & Producing Program, and mentorship from prominent producers and industry specialists.
NEW YORK CITY: The Clive Barnes Foundation (CBF), which supports young artists through recognition, encouragement, and financial support, has announced the 2025-26 Honored Artists for the Clive Barnes Award in Dance and Theatre. Artists were selected based on live performances in New York City between June 2025 and July 2026.
This year’s theatre honorees are Jasmine Amy Rogers (Broadway’s BOOP! The Musical; Off-Broadway’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), Ben Levi Ross (Broadway’s Ragtime, Dear Evan Hansen), and Sam Tutty (Broadway’s Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)). Dance journalist Marina Harss (Hudson Review, The New York Times) will receive the Clive Barnes Award for Achievement in Media and Journalism.
The 16th annual Clive Barnes Award ceremony will be held on Monday, Oct. 19 at 6:30 p.m. at the Martha Graham Studios, 1501 Broadway, in New York City. It will be hosted by Budd Mishkin of 1010WINS and Before the Cheering Started podcast, and include performances from actor Anna Zavelson and former Martha Graham principal dancer Charlotte Landreau.
NEW YORK CITY: Life Jacket Theatre Company and Page 73 have announced the four playwrights selected for the 2026 Writers Room, a new three-week immersive residency in upstate New York designed to give early-career LGBTQ+ playwrights the time, space, and creative community to develop new works inspired by real people and events.
This year’s cohort includes Justin Halle, self-described as “a queer, Jewy, and sometimes funny” playwright from NYC; Dhari Noel, a queer Black Caribbean Harlemite artist who explores the incoherence of race, failures of gender, and inherited performances; playwright and poet Audley Puglisi; and playwright and performer Danielle Stagger, who prioritizes the authentic presence of Blackness, queerness, and womanhood. All four have been members of the Page 73 Writers Group and earned national recognition through prestigious fellowships, commissions, festivals, and new-play development programs.
The Writers Room Residency offers something increasingly rare for emerging playwrights: uninterrupted time to write, experiment, take creative risks, and imagine what a new play can become. The residency reflects the shared commitment of Life Jacket Theatre Company and Page 73 to providing playwrights with meaningful resources, dedicated time, and artistic community during the formative stages of developing new work. The 2026 Writers Room Residency is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.
NEW YORK CITY: The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, the nonprofit organization serving the musical theatre community, has announced the 11 award recipients for the 2026-27 Frank Young Fund for New Musicals Project Development and Production Grants that support NAMT member nonprofit theatres in collaborations with writers to create, develop, and produce new musicals, and the 11 award recipients for the 2026-27 Impact and Exploration Fund, designed to help NAMT member theatres pilot new capacity-building programs.
The Frank Young Fund for New Musicals has awarded $5,000 to $20,000 to the following member theatres to support full productions: Ars Nova for Where We Meet by Kate Eberstadt; McCarter Theatre Center for A Beat of Our Own by Rehana Lew Mirza, Mike Lew, and Sam Willmott; New London Barn Playhouse for WAKEMAN by Jenn Grinels; Theater Latté Da for MY ÁNTONIA by Kate Kilbane, Dan Moses, and Noah Brody; and TheaterWorksUSA with Center Theatre Group for The Baby-Sitters Club Musical by Mark Sonnenblick and Kate Wetherhead.
The Frank Young Fund for New Musicals has awarded $4,000 to $5,000 to the following member theatres to support a workshop or reading: Center Theatre Group for WEST: The Final Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Tara Moses, Andy Mientus, Wade Fernandez, and Jackson Teeley; New York Theatre Barn for ANDY, KEITH & JEAN-MICHEL by Matthew Puckett; Philadelphia Theatre Company for La Guagua 47: An American Musical by Alba Martinez; Prospect Musicals for Yukon, Ho! by Adrian Blake Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn; Theater Latté Da for She’s Come Undone by Michael Holland, Darrah Cloud, and David Simpatico; and Zachary Scott Theatre Center for Campfire: Theater for the Very Young by Nat Miller and Christina Freeman.
The Impact and Exploration Fund has awarded $35,000 to member organizations to support projects: Aurora Theatre for expanding access and building sustainable audience engagement capacity; La Jolla Playhouse for an open captioning transition; Music Theater Works for creating a community production facility; New London Barn Playhouse for an LED lighting upgrade; Playwrights Horizons for a live closed-captioning service; Prospect Musicals for supporting emerging voices and new musicals development; Seattle Rep for accessibility support for disabled artists in Freak the Mighty; the Lexington Theatre Company for technology and operations; Theater Latté Da for next stage reclamation and fiscal sponsorship; Theatre Now New York for a new works marketplace; and Village Theatre for exploration of accessibility services.
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 Lynnette Barkley Fund. Each will receive a $5,000 unrestricted award. They are Lindsey Hope Pearlman, a Lecoq-trained director and playwright specializing in physical, image-driven comedic plays and musicals; Diego Alejandro González, a theatremaker and the co-creator of BORDERLANDS theater collective; and Jaquita Ta’le, a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and co-artistic director of Bottle Tree Theatre.
Established in 2025, the Lynnette Barkley Fund was created to help directors and choreographers pursue passion projects, develop new work, and access opportunities that will elevate their artistic practice. Created by director and choreographer Lynnette Barkley and administered by SDCF, the fund provides unrestricted financial support to alumni of SDCF’s Professional Development Program as they take their next steps.
HONOLULU, HI.: Kumu Kahua Theatre has announced the 2026 winners of its Annual Playwriting Contest, co-sponsored with the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Theatre and Dance. The 2026 winner of the top $600 Hawaiʻi Prize for plays exploring aspects of the Hawai’i experience is Sean-Joseph Choo of Honolulu, who wrote aloha state.
The contest offers three categories focused on feature-length plays, with opportunities for both Hawai’i residents and non-residents to submit original scripts. Cathy Midori Stonie of San Jose, California, won the $450 Pacific/Rim Prize, which recognizes a play set in, or exploring, the Pacific Islands/Rim experience for In the Shadow of Mt. Fuji. Taking home the $250 Resident Prize, open to any story topic from residents of Hawaiʻi, is Teagan Rae Staskawicz of Honolulu, with her play Hawaiian Supʻpa Man.
All winners and contest entrants have the opportunity to become part of Kumu Kahua Theatre Competition Plays, a collection of manuscripts housed and bound in the Hawaiian & Pacific Collection, Hamilton Library on the UH Mānoa campus. This collection goes back to the 1940s, and is a historical record of the competition.
The call for the 2027 Annual Playwriting Contest is open now through Jan. 4, 2027. Submission details are available online.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: The American Alliance for Theatre & Education has announced the recipients of its 2026 awards, celebrating outstanding contributions to theatre education, student achievement, and theatrical innovation. They were presented at its national conference on July 29-Aug. 1 in Greenville, South Carolina.
The Johnny Saldaña Outstanding Professor of Theatre Education Award, which honors excellence in teaching, research/creative activity, and service at the college or university level, went to Gina Grandi. The Ann Elgood Youth Theatre Director Award, recognizing outstanding achievement as a director in youth theatre who serves as a model of excellence and innovation was awarded to Lee Lee Newcomb. The Charlotte B. Chorpenning Playwright Award, honoring a nationally known writer of outstanding plays for children and recognizing a body of work, was given to playwright Claudia Haas.
Students receiving the AATE Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award were Alyssa Harms and Kaitlyn Fields. The winner of the Winifred Ward Scholarship was Alyssa Vera Ramos, and Cameryn Richardson won the Don and Elizabeth Doyle fellowship. Academic awards included recognitions for Distinguished Dissertation Award winner Asher Johnson, for “Teacher-As-Playwright: Performance Education Scriptwriting to Impact Students and Community,” and Distinguished Thesis Award winner Sara Berliner, for “Eating Disorder Risk Reduction for Theatre Educators.”
Winners of the Distinguished Book Award were Imagination Stage founder Bonnie Fogel and Brett Crawford for Entrepreneurial Arts and Cultural Leadership: Traits of Success in Nonprofit Theatre, and Kathryn Dawson, Beth Link, Stephanie Cawthon, and Lara Dossett for Drama for Schools and Beyond: Transformative Learning Through the Arts. Both were published by Intellect Books.
AATE runs a Playwrights for Change competition that encourages young and adult playwrights to create original works. This year’s theme was “Widening Our Circle of Compassion.” The adult winner was Andrew Geha for Collision, with Meredith Campbell as runner-up for Once Upon AI Time. The high school winner was Lucy Gibson for Forget Me Not. Dahlia Ramsay was the runner-up for her play Fight the Dragon. Three middle schoolers were honored: winner Amelie Langlois for Why Can’t We Just Be Friends, runner-up Enzo Lamas for Friendships Found in Mazes, and honorable mention recipient Penelope Lyons for Following the Fox.
AATE’s Distinguished Play Award honors playwrights for the most outstanding plays for young people published or written during the past calendar year. The winner of Category A for pre-K and elementary audiences was The Golden Loc by Prentiss Matthews III, published by Plays for New Audiences. The winner of Category B for Middle and Secondary School Audiences was The Girl Who Was a Hundred Girls by Finegan Kruckemeyer, published by Stage Partners. The Category C award winner for adaptations from children’s literature for Pre-K and Elementary audiences was Milo Imagines the World by Terry Guest, with music and lyrics by Christian Albright and Christian Magby, published by Plays for New Audiences. Winning Category D for adaptations from children’s literature for middle and secondary school audiences was Enter the Body by Joy McCullough, published by Stage Partners.
