BroadwayWorld is pleased to announce the winners for the 17th annual Theater Fans’ Choice Awards, by FAR, the largest fan based awards of their kind. Open to anyone to vote, the awards present a full slate of eligible nominees in categories that both mirror the popular critical awards, as well as fan favorite categories for Best Tour, Ensemble and Off Broadway shows.
A record number of fans participated in voting for this year’s awards, doubling the number of votes from last year alone.
BE MORE CHILL leads with a total of 10 wins, followed by HADESTOWN which took home 5 awards. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD also takes home 5 awards.
Lambda Literary Award winners were celebrated at a star-studded ceremony last night in New York City at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.
Once again, the winners of this year’s Lambda Literary Awards demonstrate how LGBTQ writing is far from monolithic. Across twenty-four categories, one finds the range of queer brilliance and a whole new set of books for your to-read list.
In 2018, France-Luce Benson was one of the winning playwrights who convened in Cassis, France to participate in the Camargo Foundation’s Cultural Diaspora residency, conceived and curated by award-winning Minneapolis-based playwright Carlyle Brown. The residency’s goal was to bring together mid-career and established African and African-American theater artists, in Brown’s words, “from opposite ends of the Africanist Diaspora,” engaging them in debates about identity and authenticity and exploring the different ways in which international boundaries shape the African experience.
As
a measure of the residency’s success, the Cultural Diaspora has inspired the
Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival (Minneapolis, July 12–14, 2019). A
collaboration of the Camargo Foundation, the Playwrights’ Center, and Carlyle
Brown & Company, the festival will feature workshops, a panel discussion on
theater and Afro-Atlantic culture, and stage readings of the works completed at
Camargo.
France-Luce
Benson, whose work will be featured in Minneapolis this July, is an award-winning
playwright of Haitian descent, currently based in Los Angeles and New York. Her
plays have had productions and workshops at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Bishop
Arts Theatre, the Fire This Time Festival, City Theatre Miami, Crossroads
Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, and the Lark, among others. Honors include:
Dramatists Guild Fellowship, Miranda Foundation grant recipient, Zoetrope Grand
prize, Alfred P. Sloan commission, Sam French OOB Festival winner, Princess
Grace Award (runner up), NNPN Best New Play, and residencies at Djerassi and
SPACE/Ryder Farm. About her work, she says, “My plays explore the black
American narrative from my perspective as a first generation Haitian-American,
born in Republic of Congo, and raised in Miami. My characters often struggle
with displacement, identity, and the impacts of trauma.” While a resident at
Camargo, she worked on part 2 of Deux Femmes on the Edge of a Revolution, a
trilogy about the Haitian revolution. She intends to complete the trilogy
during her residency at the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil later this year.
The
festival, free and open to the public, will take place at the Playwrights’
Center, renowned for supporting
playwrights and promoting new plays to production at theaters across the U.S.
While at Camargo, fellows had the opportunity to meet African-European artists,
work with local theater students, and participate in a roundtable discussion
entitled “African and Afro-Descendent Writing,” which was presented as part of
the Festival de Marseille and Massilia Afropea. In Minneapolis, they will discuss the impact of these experiences
on their work and debate various conceptual and cultural facets of African
diaspora studies. A second event will take place in New York in Fall 2019, in
collaboration with NYU’s Department of Literature and Tisch Theatre Studies
program.
Founding Executive Director Kathy Evans announced the 27 writers of nine new musicals for Rhinebeck Writers Retreat’s summer weeklong residencies.
The nine musicals were selected from 160 applications, which were reviewed by 27 readers in the first round and, in the final round, six new musical experts who are members of Rhinebeck Writers Retreat’s Sounding Board: Tory Bailey, Executive Director of the Theatre Development Fund; Neil Bartram, Composer; Kent Nicholson, Associate Producer of Musical Theatre, Playwrights Horizons; Barbara Pasternack, Artistic Director, TheatreWorks USA; Natasha Sinha, Director of Artistic Programs, Signature Theatre; and Steve Stettler, former Producing Artistic Director, Weston Playhouse.
For nine consecutive weeks beginning June 30, each writing team is awarded a private weeklong residency in the Hudson Valley to focus solely on writing their musical. Writers are provided a home, transportation, food, and a stipend, and all their costs are covered by Rhinebeck Writers Retreat’s donors.
· August 4 – August 11: Brandon James Gwinn, EllaRose Chary, and Sherri Eden Barber, TL;DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix, with Lead Support from Liz Armstrong
Read more about the retreat and other writers chosen from Broadway World here.
Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical The Beast in the Jungle Black Light Girl from the North Country The Hello Girls Midnight at the Never Get
Outstanding Book Of A Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway) Robert Horn, Tootsie Conor McPherson, Girl from the North Country Peter Mills and Cara Reichel, The Hello Girls Anaïs Mitchell, Hadestown Jeff Whitty and James Magruder, Head Over Heels
Outstanding New Score (Broadway or Off-Broadway) Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, The Prom Joe Iconis, Be More Chill Peter Mills, The Hello Girls Anaïs Mitchell, Hadestown David Yazbek, Tootsie
Outstanding Director Of A Musical Rachel Chavkin, Hadestown Scott Ellis, Tootsie Daniel Fish, Oklahoma! Joel Grey, Fiddler on the Roof (in Yiddish) Cara Reichel, The Hello Girls