NEW YORK CITY: The Gish Prize Trust has announced that the 2025 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize has been awarded to actress, director, dramaturg, and Pregones/PRTT co-founder Rosalba Rolón. She is the first Puerto Rican artist to receive the award. She will be honored at a reception in New York City in fall 2025. Rolón’s passion for popular street theatre, improvised stages, and exchange with a broad range of audiences led her to co-found the touring ensemble Pregones Theater in 1979. Under her guidance, the company’s actors, musicians, writers, and designers developed musical theatre based on historical events and adaptations of non-theatrical material, bringing Latino theatre and stories to communities and spaces that had been scarcely reached. Now merged with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, the company has performed in almost 600 U.S. cities throughout 38 states, and in 18 countries. The Prize, established in screen and stage actress Lillian Gish’s will in 1994, is given to a figure from any arts discipline who has pushed boundaries, excelled in their field, and served as a model for the next generation. It is currently valued at more than $250,000.
HAILEY, IDAHO: Sun Valley Playwright’s Residency (SVPR) has announced that Tony Award winner and two-time Pulitzer finalist Stephen Karam (The Humans) is its 2025-26 resident playwright. Karam will receive a commission, creative support, and residency time in Idaho’s Wood River Valley to create a new play over the course of a year. This fall, Karam will spend several weeks as the writer-in-residence at the historic Ernest and Mary Hemingway House. He will participate in a free conversation on his writing process for the stage and screen on Oct. 14 at Sun Valley’s Community Library. SVPR is a nonprofit that fosters new relationships between theatremakers and Idaho’s Wood River Valley community and aims to fuel the American theatre with invigorating new plays.
NEW YORK CITY: The American Playwriting Foundation has announced emerging musical theatre writer and composer Jack D. Coen as the winner of its 2025 Relentless Musical Award, the largest annual cash prize in American theatre for works that are fearless in their choice of subject matter, featuring bold, relentlessly honest storytelling. Coen will receive $65,000 for his existential sci-fi comedy Jo Jenkins Before the Galactic High Court of Consciousness. This year’s award for musicals, given in honor of Adam Schlesinger, is the second devoted to musical theatre. The musical award is presented bi-annually, alternating with the Relentless Award for plays in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Finalists awarded $2,500 include Jaime Cepero’s Francois & the Rebels; Brandy Hoang Collier (book), Clare Fuyuko Bierman (lyrics), and Erika Ji’s (music) Yoko’s Husband’s Killer’s Japanese Wife, Gloria; and Cheeyang Ng’s Legendary. These works will be honored at a ceremony at Theatre Row on Oct. 12 featuring performances from Fountains of Wayne frontman Chris Collingswood, Schlesinger’s friend Jesse Malin, and others to be announced.
Coen and the finalists were selected by a panel of judges with personal connections to Hoffman and Schlesinger, including Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-creator, star, and Schlesinger’s close friend and collaborator Rachel Bloom; three-time Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown; playwright and Schlesinger collaborator David Javerbaum; multi-platinum songwriter and producer Sam Hollander; composer, arranger, educator, and inaugural Relentless Musical Award winner Laura Grill Jaye; Relentless Award founder and Schlesinger’s close college friend David Bar Katz; two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage; artist, musician, and writer Brontez Purnell; and Obie-winning playwright Lucy Thurber.
NEW YORK CITY: Colt Coeur has announced its resident artists for the 15th anniversary season in 2025-26. They include actor and director Sheila Bandyopadhyay; playwright Elliot Connors; actor, playwright, director, and sex educator Ashil Lee; playwright Sarah Mantell; playwright Jahquale Mazyck; theatremaker, technology artist, and video game designer Attilio Rigotti; writer and actor Amita Sharma; and performer, writer, and activist Jasmine Sharma. Since it was launched in 2017, the CoCo Residency Program has welcomed six to nine playwrights, directors, designers, dramaturgs, and creative producers for a year-long residency, offering community, space to work, a stipend, and other artistic, administrative, and financial support. Artistic director Adrienne Campbell-Holt and artistic associate Talya Braverman meet with residents quarterly to forge creative collaborations and amplify their voices. Luminaries from the field are invited to join the group for panel discussions, conversations, and networking.
PORTLAND, ORE.: Advance Gender Equity in the Arts (AGE) has announced Lee Cataluna, Denmo Ibrahim, and Anya Pearson as the recipients of the fourth annual AGE Legacy Playwright (ALP) grants. Ibrahim and Pearson are theatremakers in AGE’s home city of Portland; Cataluna is a Hawaii native. The ALP grants annually award three BIPOC playwrights of marginalized gender over the age of 40 each a $10,000 unrestricted grant. They were created in 2022 by AGE founder Jane Vogel Mantiri to invest in emerging writers who are historically underrepresented and underserved because of their gender, race, and age. The deNovo Initiative underwrites the awards to further their mission supporting storytellers who challenge values, opinions, and beliefs. AGE has awarded over $200,000 to ALP recipients and finalists. This cycle, AGE received a record number of applications.
SAN FRANCISCO: Theatre Bay Area has announced that Jamella Cross is its 2025 RHE Charitable Foundation artistic fellow. Cross was introduced as the awardee on Nov. 17, at Theatre Bay Area’s 2025 conference. Cross, a self-described born-and-raised Oakland “audience alchemist,” has been seen onstage across the Bay Area, including Berkeley Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, Oakland Theater Project, and SF Opera. Recent appearances include Froggy at Center Rep and Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Aurora Theatre Company. This fellowship makes a significant investment in the careers of individual female or nonbinary actors of color. It honors the legacy of its founder, Richard H. Epstein.
NEW YORK CITY: The Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) has announced the grantees of the inaugural A4 Arts Fund, a first-of-its-kind national initiative awarding $500,000 in general operating support to arts and cultural organizations uplifting Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. A4 received applications from organizations in 33 states, Washington, D.C., and Guam. AAPI theatremakers are among grantees receiving $25,000 each, including Bindlestiff Studio, Breaking Wave Theatre Company, CHUANG Stage, Kumu Kahua Theatre, National Asian Artists Project, and Yun Theatre. Funded by the Wallace Foundation as part of its Advancing Well-Being in the Arts initiative, the program was developed with National Arts Regranting Partners. Over the one-year cycle, A4 will offer grantees the space to connect through a virtual cohort engagement model, creating a national community of peer organizations to foster collaboration, knowledge exchange, and mutual support.
NEW YORK CITY: Abrons Arts Center has announced the latest cohort of its Performance AIRspace residency: Shamar Watt and Cherrie Yu. Watt is an interdisciplinary artist who interrogates the entanglements of liberation through sound, movement, and visual art. Yu works in choreography, moving images, writing and installation. With support from the Jerome Foundation, the residency supports a cohort of two early-career performing artists for a project development residency. Performance AIRspace residents are provided with a commission fee and premium access to studios and theatres for rehearsals towards the development of a live performance to premiere at Abrons Arts Center in 2026-27.
ATLANTA: Synchronicity Theatre has announced a new fellows program funded through Arts Midwest’s Shakespeare in American Communities grant. Their fellows will increase Synchronicity’s capacity and outreach impact, while growing three new arts professionals. The inaugural fellows are Atlanta native and previous Synchronicity arts administration intern Anaiyah Sabir, who will be a community engagement fellow with a concentration on partner and event development; sound designer, podcaster, and creative career advocate Kacie Luaders, whose work bridges arts nonprofits, cultural research, and media innovation, and who will be a community engagement fellow focused on data analysis and targeted messaging; and lighting and sound designer, programmer, and technician Parker Rawson, a recent Kennesaw State University graduate who will be a production fellow focused on supporting all of the production elements of Synchronicity’s 28th season.
