MANASOTA KEY, FLORIDA: The Hermitage Artist Retreat has announced today that U.K.-based playwright and actor Waleed Akhtar has been selected as the seventh recipient of the Hermitage Major Theater Award. This jury-selected prize offers one of the largest nonprofit theatre commissions in the United States and the United Kingdom. Akhtar will receive a cash prize of $35,000, as well as a residency at the Hermitage and a developmental workshop in a major arts capital, which, for this commission, will be London in late 2028.
Akhtar won an Olivier for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theater for his play The P Word, and Most Promising Playwright at the Off West End Awards for Kabul Goes Pop: Music Television Afghanistan. His audio drama Mrs. Bibi was nominated for Best Play at the Tinniswood Awards. He is also a recipient of a MGC Futures bursary, the Peggy Ramsey Foundation / Film 4 Playwrights’ Scheme, and was selected for the BBC Spotlight initiative. He has written for The Road Trip for Paramount+, and his short Lost Paradise was produced by the U.K. Film Council and played in festivals across Europe. In addition to his theatrical work, Akhtar is currently in development on several TV projects and has commissions.
NEW YORK CITY: The Drama Desk Awards has named three-time Drama Desk winner and multi-time Tony and Grammy winner Bernadette Peters the recipient of the Harold Prince Award for the 2026-27 season. The Drama Desk Awards will take place on May 23, 2027, at the Shed. The ceremony will feature a special tribute to Peters’s career. Peters first made her mark at the Drama Desk Awards in 1968, as a nominee and winner for her acclaimed performance in Dames at Sea. A nine-time Drama Desk Award nominee, Peters also stands as the most nominated performer in Drama Desk history.
The Harold S. Prince Award is an annual lifetime achievement honor established to recognize an individual with a distinguished body of work and a lasting, transformational impact on the theatre industry. Previous recipients include Tom Schumacher, Gavin Creel, Nathan Lane, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Alice Childress, and Harold S. Prince.
NEW YORK CITY: The Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the nonprofit foundation of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), has announced that Tony-winning director Michael Mayer will be honored with SDCF’s 2027 “Mr. Abbott” Award, given to a director or choreographer in recognition of their outstanding contributions to Broadway. This award, presented by SDCF on behalf of directors and choreographers to one of their peers, is named in honor of the late renowned director George Abbott. The award will be presented at the foundation’s gala on March 22, 2027, at 6 p.m. at Gotham Hall in New York City.
Mayer is currently in rehearsal for the original musical Galileo, which will open at the Shubert Theatre on Dec. 6 after its premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2024. He is also represented Off-Broadway by Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theatre, which recently became the longest-running production in the show’s history. Other recent Broadway credits include Chess, Swept Away, and Funny Girl. Mayer won the 2007 Tony for Best Direction of a Musical for the Broadway production of Spring Awakening.
NEW YORK CITY: The American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association (ATCA) will award writer and arts journalist Anastazia X. Neely (she/her) the fifth annual Edward Medina Prize for Excellence in Cultural Criticism on Nov. 14 during ATCA’s 2026 conference in New York. Neely will receive a cash award, a complimentary annual ATCA membership, and a stipend to help offset attendance costs for the November 2026 ATCA conference in New York City. During the 2026 ATCA conference, BEID committee members, including Medina’s widower, Nate Hinkle, will present Neely with the award.
Neely, known professionally as anastazia x, is a writer and educator based in New York City who covers theatre, museums, and galleries at blackstarreviews.com.
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y.: The Leah Ryan Fund has announced playwright Carla Ching as the next recipient of the Boost, a commission now in its second cycle, awarded to a woman, trans, or nonbinary playwright over 40 for a play to be written in conversation with one of Leah Ryan’s plays. For this cycle, the chosen play was Debt, a one-act comedy about “unpaid bills, endorphins, band practice, Marvin Gaye, and even more unpaid bills…something for everyone.” Ching receives the commission for her proposed play, Kye Club, about a group of friends who gather monthly at the Number One Seafood Restaurant in Monterey Park to engage in a radical project: to lend each other money to start new businesses, inspired by the Korean American “kye” system. This play is slated to have a public reading in the fall of 2027.
Ching is an Asian American theatremaker and television writer/producer who is a native and current Angeleno, though she called NYC home for 16 years. Her plays include Rage Play (NNPN Festival of New Plays 2025), Revenge Porn or The Story of a Body (Ammunition Theater Company), Nomad Motel (NNPN Rolling World Premiere at City Theatre, Horizon Theatre and Unicorn Theatre; N.Y. Premiere at the Atlantic), The Two Kids That Blow Shit Up (Artists at Play, Theatre Mu), Fast Company (South Coast Rep, EST) and TBA (2g).
NEW YORK CITY: The New York Community Trust has announced the six 2026 recipients of its annual Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting. To honor the late theatrical agent Helen Merrill’s legacy of nurturing talent and to help sustain the singular voices of playwrights, $35,000 awards have gone to Raquel Almazan, Ngozi Anyanwu, William Burke, Normandy Sherwood, reid tang, and Jesús I. Valles. The awards are unique in that they don’t have an application process or stipulations for the prize money. Each year, an advisory committee composed of theatre professionals chooses awardees from among writers at all stages in their careers.
NEW YORK CITY: Sam Norman and Eliza Randall have been named the winners of the 2026 Fred Ebb Award, which recognizes excellence in emerging musical theatre songwriting. Norman and Randall will receive the honor from Tony winner Bebe Neuwirth at an invite-only ceremony at 54 Below on Dec. 7. Norman and Randall’s musicals include The Debutantes, developed at Manhattan Musical Theatre Lab and Newport NewWorks, and Echolocation, winner of the Stiles + Drewe Mentorship Award and an Arts Council England grant, and developed in Theatre Royal Plymouth’s Experiment program.
NEW YORK CITY and ROME, ITALY: The American Academy in Rome has announced the recipients of the 2026-27 Billie Tsien Rome Prize and Italian Fellows Program, awarded through a national competition that supports innovative work across the arts and humanities. This year’s fellowships began in September 2026. The 31 fellows will reside and work at the Academy’s 11-acre campus on the Janiculum Hill for periods ranging from five to 10 months. Theatre participants include Cameron Anderson, a scenic designer working across theatre and opera, whose five-month funded residency begins in February 2027.
“I see this recognition as an opportunity to highlight the artistic ideas and contributions that extend beyond individual productions—and to explore how theatrical visual storytelling shapes our understanding of human experience, giving spatial and material form to questions of identity, memory, power, and belonging,” Anderson shared in an email.
NEW YORK CITY: TYA/USA has announced the pilot year of the Circle Program, a peer-learning initiative for self-identified mid-career TYA/USA members designed to strengthen connections across the field while fostering mutual growth, reflection, and support. The inaugural cohort includes producer, writer, and actor Nambi E. Kelley; theatremaker, professor, and Town Square Arts founder Renata Townsend; Alliance Theatre resident artist and Teen Programs Manager Sam Provenzano; California-based theatremaker and educator Phyllis Wong; playwright and Holden and Arts Associates co-director Sarah Saltwick; puppetry specialist and teaching artist Aretha Baumgartner; Kerfuffle artistic director Ashley Laverty; Maine-based writer and performer Lindz Amer; Little Blue Theatre Company artistic director Colin Peterson; Paper Mill Playhouse director of education Paul McGinley; Charleston Stage director of education and engagement Rylee Coppel; Children’s Museum of Manhattan director of public programs Tamar Mackay; Oklahoma Children’s Theatre director of education Mollie Reid; Portland Ovations director of school and family programs Liz Schildkret; Creede Repertory Theatre director of education and engagement Jenni Harbour; and Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts director of children’s theatre and performing arts Chad Bradford.
CINCINNATI: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company producing artistic director and CEO Brian Isaac Phillips was recently honored with the Cincinnati Business Courier’s 2026 C-Suite Award for Chief Executive Officer of the Year in the Small Nonprofit category. The award recognizes Phillips’s 23 years of leadership, particularly his success in combining artistic vision with business innovation and financial sustainability. Under his leadership, Cincy Shakes has grown into a $4 million nonprofit organization, completed a major theatre construction project, and is now embarking on a new $25 million expansion.
NEW YORK CITY: Clubbed Thumb’s 2026-27 Early-Career Writers’ Group has been announced. Each year, the theatre gathers eight playwrights over the course of a season to develop work, commune with each other, and meet industry professionals. In May/June 2027, they will receive readings of their work-in-process during Summerworks 2027. The group includes Ghanaian-American playwright and administrator Agyeiwaa Asante; playwright/actor and former Chicago New Futurists member Ida Cuttler; Brooklyn-based writer Carlin Feck; comedy and surrealism playwright Fiona Gorry-Hines; Muslim-Indian-Floridian writer Salwa Meghjee; Jacob K Robinson, a writer from small town Texas; and Amy B. Tiong, a Chinese-American playwright, screenwriter, and film director.
