ATCA Theatre Hall of Famers for 2013

The American Theatre Critics Association has chosen its Theater Hall of Fame honorees for 2013, with actors Ellen Burstyn and Cherry Jones, designer David Hays, director Jerry Zaks, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, multi-hyphenates Lynne Meadow and George C. Wolfe, and producer Cameron Mackintosh in this year's class of inductees. This is the 43rd year for the Theater Hall of Fame, which honors Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. This year's celebration will take place at the Gershwin Theatre on January 27, 2014.

Ellen Burstyn is probably best known for her film appearances. She has been nominated for an Academy Award six times, winning as Best Actress in 1975 for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. She won a Golden Globe in 1979 for the film version of Same Time Next Year, for which she also won a Tony, and Emmys in 2009 and 2013 for a guest spot on Law & Order: SVU and her role as the matriarch of a powerful political family in Political Animals. Burstyn made her Broadway debut in 1957 with Fair Game, returning from time to time, including Same Time, Next Year in 1975 and Picnic earlier this year.

Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was the first female African-American playwright to see her work on Broadway. Her seminal work, A Raisin in the Sun, opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1959, and was revived in 2004 with a cast that included P. Diddy, Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald. It will be back on Broadway next year in a production set to star Denzel Washington and Diahann Carroll. A Raisin in the Sun also spawned a musical called Raisin and inspired new plays Clybourne Park (a Pulitzer Prize winner) by Bruce Norris and Beneatha's Place by Kwame Kwei-Armah. Hansberry's other plays include The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window and Les Blancs. When she won the Best Play award from the New York Drama Critics Circle for A Raisin in the Sun, she was the youngest American playwright to receive that honor.

David Hays is a scenic and lighting designer with an extensive resume including the original Broadway production of Long Day's Journey Into Night in 1956 and revivals of Dinner at Eight, Saint Joan, The Miser, and Cyrano de Bergerac. His scenic designs for The Tenth Man, All the Way Home, No Strings, Marco Millions and Drat! The Cat! all earned him Tony nominations. Hays also founded the National Theatre of the Deaf, serving as its artistic director as well as directing, producing and taking on administration of the theatre.

Cherry Jones (L) with Celia Keenan-Bolger in The Glass Menagerie

Cherry Jones is one of the most notable actresses currently on the American stage, with some 14 Broadway shows on her resume, including four Tony nominations and two wins in the Best Actress in a Play category. The Tony Awards came for her roles in The Heiress and Doubt, and she is currently appearing in The Glass Menagerie at the Booth Theatre, which may win her another one. On TV, she is best known as for her role as President Allison Taylor on 24, while her film credits include Cradle Will Rock and Erin Brockovich.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh is a producer extraordinaire, and the producer behind smash successes like Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon and Cats.He has won Tony Awards for his productions of Cats, Les Miz and Phantom, as well as revivals of Carousel and Swan Lake. The New York Times has described Mackintosh as "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world."

Lynne Meadow is the Artistic Director of Manhattan Theatre Club, a position she has held since 1972. Meadow has directed and/or produced over 450 New York and world premieres, with Tony Awards for producing Proof, Doubt and Love! Valour! Compassion! Her directing credits include Margaret Edson’s Wit, Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories, Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, and Alan Ayckbourn's A Small Family Business with Brian Murray and Woman in Mind with Stockard Channing. She is currently directing The Commons of Pensacola, a brand-new play written by actress Amanda Peet, starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner, now in previews and opening November 21.

George C. Wolfe has won Tony Awards as a director  -- Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk -- and as a producer -- Angels in America: Perestroika, Elaine Stritch: At Liberty, and Take Me Out -- and a Drama Desk Award for writing the Outstanding Book of a Musical, for Jelly's Last Jam. His direction of The Normal Heart and Millennium Approaches won more Drama Desks, and he picked up an Obie for directing Spunk, a collection of Zora Neale Hurston pieces. Wolfe was the producer of the Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival from 1993 to 2005, and he most recently directed Lucky Guy, starring Tom Hanks.

Jerry Zaks began his Broadway career as a performer, but by 1986 and The House of Blue Leaves, he had switched to directing. The House of Blue Leaves earned Zaks a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for his direction, and he won both awards again for Lend Me a Tenor, Six Degrees of Separation and Guys and Dolls. In addition to the four Tonys and four Drama Desk Awards, Zaks owns two Outer Critics Circle Awards, an Obie, and an NAACP Image Award nomination for his national tour of The Tap Dance Kid. He also directed the film Marvin's Room, which starred Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio, and all kinds of television episodes, from Frasier to Two and a Half Men. He is a founding member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Playwright Tammy Ryan Wins 2012 Primus Prize

The American Theatre Critics Association held their annual conference in Chicago last week. As part of that gathering, ATCA announced that playwright Tammy Ryan had won the 2012 Francesca Primus Prize for her play "Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods." The Primus Prize gives Ryan a $10,000 cash prize along with a wall plaque.

The Primus Prize, which is awarded to "an emerging woman theater artist" comes from the ATCA in conjunction with the Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation. The Foundation was created in 1997 to memorialize actress, critic and ATCA member Francesca Primus. Barry Primus, the administrator of the Foundation, noted that “The Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation was established to recognize and support emerging women artists who are making a difference in the theater community in which they work.”

Tammy Ryan

"Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods" involves a middle-aged white woman who runs across a "Lost Boy," a refugee from civil war in the Sudan, working at her local upscale grocery store. Christine, the woman, chats with and forms a friendship with the boy, who works in the produce section at her Whole Foods, eventually taking him home to live with her and her daughter. Ryan combines issues of international relations with the highly personal, as Christine's attempts to help Gabriel give her a sense of purpose and meaning she had previously been missing. For the ATCA, Pittsburgh theater critic Christopher Rawson wrote, “The person who is most truly lost amid middle-class comfort is...Christine." He adds, "[The play charts] the faltering, one-forward, one-back steps she takes to find her own usefulness and meaning.”

"Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods" was developed in 2009 as part of the New Harmony Project. The play went on to win the Premiere Stages Play Festival, after which Premiere Stages and Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey co-produced the play in September of 2010. The next year, Playhouse Rep in Pittsburgh staged a production that sold out its entire run. In reviews, Anita Gates called the play "remarkably touching" in the New York Times, while Sherri Rase simply said, "See. This. Play" for Q on Stage.

The ATCA indicates that the Primus Prize recognizes not only "Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods" and Tammy Ryan's general success as a playwright, but also her willingness to mentor young playwrights and "extend her expertise through teaching and collaborative projects like 'We Are Antigone,' developed with both high school and college students." Earlier this year, Ryan created From the Ground Up, a program which attempts to connect artistic directors of small theaters with emerging playwrights.

Ryan’s other plays include "FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My Father's Code," "Baby’s Blues," "Dark Part of the Forest," and "The Music Lesson." She has won numerous awards and citations, which you can see here. In 2011, Ryan worked with Turkish playwright Zeynep Kaçar on a one-act called "Lindsey’s Oyster," which was produced in both Turkey and the United States. "Oyster" is Ryan's and Kaçar's view of "what it means to be female in their vastly different societies." 

Playwright Dominique Morisseau was also singled out for a special commendation for her play, "Follow Me to Nellie’s," a look at "how a Mississippi brothel and its outspoken madam become entwined in the civil rights struggle to register black voters in 1955." "Nellie's" received a reading at the 2010 National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center before a full staging at Premiere Stages in New Jersey last summer. Morriseau is currently developing a trilogy of plays set in Detroit, her hometown, and also working on a play called "Sunset Baby," which is scheduled for a run in London later this year.

The ATCA's nationwide committee of critics chose Ryan and Morisseay from among a group of 22 nominees. Barbara Bannon of Salt Lake City chaired the committee, which included Julie York Coppens of Cincinnati, Marianne Evett of Boston, Lynn Rosen of Bellingham, Washington, and Herb Simpson of Geneseo, New York.

In addition to the Primus Prize, the ATCA also presents the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award and the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award each year, as well as voting on and recommending the annual Tony Award for an outstanding regional theater and voting new members into the Theatre Hall of Fame. For more information, visit the ATCA website at www.americantheatrecritics.org.

The ATCA has also thoughtfully provided a list of former winners, which you will see below. Although the award is not limited to playwrights, most of the winners have indeed been playwrights. They are listed below with the plays for which they won, with Michelle Hensley and Karen Zacarius noted for the theater companies they are associated with and for which association they were awarded the Primus Prize.

Previous Winners of the Francesca Primus Prize

1997 Julia Jordan, "Tatjana in Color"
1998 Brooke Berman, "Wonderland"
1999 Melanie Marnich, "Blur"
2000 Brooke Berman, "Playing House"
2001 S.M. Shepard-Massat, "Some Place Soft to Fall"
2002 Alexandra Cunningham, "Pavane"
2004 Lynn Nottage, "Intimate Apparel"
2005 Michelle Hensley, artistic director of Ten Thousand Things Theatre Company, Minneapolis
2006 Karen Zacarias, playwright ("Mariele in the Desert") and founder/artistic director of Young Playwrights Theater, Washington, DC
2007 Victoria Stewart, "Hardball"
2008 EM Lewis, "Heads"
2009 Jamie Pachino, "Splitting Infinity"
2010 Michele Lowe, "Inana"
2011 Caridad Svich, "The House of the Spirits"

Primus Prize Awarded to Jamie Pachino

Just got this press release from the ATCA and thought I would share...

SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN FOR 2010 PRIMUS PRIZE (see details at end)

The Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation and the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) are pleased to announce that playwright Jamie Pachino of Los Angeles has been awarded the $10,000 2009 Francesca Primus Prize for her play Splitting Infinity. Included is a trip to this summer’s ATCA conference at the O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut.

The Primus Prize is given annually to an emerging woman theater artist, either playwright, artistic director or director.

Splitting Infinity focuses on Leigh, a Nobel Prize–winning astrophysicist, who pursues evidence of God through physics. The polarity between faith and science finds dramatic expression in two relationships, the first with a handsome rabbi, Saul, and the other with Robbie, a young graduate student who idolizes her.

Splitting Infinity was commissioned by the Steppenwolf Theatre and premiered at the Geva Theatre, directed by Mark Cuddy and starring Elizabeth Hess and Michael Rupert. It has had subsequent productions at San Jose Rep, Florida Stage and elsewhere. It has already received such recognition as the Laurie Foundation Theatre Visionary Award and the STAGE International Script Competition (Professional Artists Lab/California NanoSystems Institute), plus awards from the Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition, the Ashland New Plays Festival, and the Becket Arts Festival.

Kirsten Brandt, who directed the production at San Jose Rep, acclaims Pachino’s “lyric style” and says the theater chose the play because of its “inherent theatricality,” complex main characters that provide great roles and “ability to make an audience think.” The San Jose Mercury News named it one of the top 10 productions of 2008.

Informed of her award, playwright Pachino said, “The Primus Prize is one that is extremely respected by women playwrights and I am so honored and delighted to be recognized.”

Pachino was selected from 41 nominees by a nationwide committee of critics, headed by Barbara Bannon (Salt Lake City) and composed of Marianne Evett, Glenda Frank, Judith Reynolds and Herb Simpson.

Given the number of contenders for the award, the committee also chose two to receive $1,000 Primus Citations, funded by ATCA: Jennifer Haley of North Hollywood, CA, for Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, which premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, directed by Kip Fagan; and Kathryn Walat of New York City for Bleeding Kansas, which premiered at the Hanger Theatre in Ithaca, N.Y., directed by Kevin Moriarity.

“The Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation was established to recognize and support emerging women artists who are making a difference in the theater community in which they work,” said Barry Primus, the foundation head. Founded in 1997 in memory of actress, critic and ATCA member Francesca Primus, the Primus Prize was originally administered by the Denver Center Theatre Company and limited to playwrights. ATCA began overseeing the award in 2004.

Pachino has been writing plays for more than a decade, and her work includes Waving Goodbye, The Return to Morality, Aurora’s Motive, and Race. Her plays have been produced and developed at theaters ranging from Steppenwolf to the American Conservatory Theatre, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse and Northlight Theatre. She also has extensive writing credits for both film and television, and she is an actress and choreographer.

ATCA is the nationwide organization of theater critics, an affiliate of the International Association of Theatre Critics. In addition to the Primus Prize, it administers the $40,000 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award and the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award. ATCA members also recommend a regional theater for the annual Tony Award and vote on induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame.

SUBMISSIONS BEING ACCEPTED FOR 2010 PRIMUS PRIZE
DEADLINE FEBRUARY 28

Submissions for the 2010 Primus Prize are now being accepted. The prize operates on an open submission basis—an applicant may submit herself or be nominated by another individual or organization.

Historically the award has been given to an outstanding female playwright, but the committee may also consider directors or artistic directors. To qualify for consideration, a playwright must have had a fully staged, professional production of her script within 2009. For other artists, there must also have been some significant achievement in the calendar year. But in both cases, the committee will consider a body of work going back several years.

A submission must be in the form of a portfolio of no more than 20 single-sided pages. It should include a letter recommending the candidate, a synopsis of her body of work, and supporting materials sufficient to familiarize the committee with her achievement, possibly including reviews and/or a statement of the artist's philosophy. Playwrights should also submit the script. If more than one play was produced in 2009, only one may be submitted, but excerpts from others might be part of the portfolio. Portfolios will not be returned.

Six copies of an applicant's entire portfolio (plus script for playwrights) along with an application fee of $25 (checks payable to ATCA) should be mailed, postmarked no later than Feb. 28, to ATCA, c/o Chris Curcio, P. O. Box 26945, Phoenix, AZ 85068; email queries at atca_admin@msn.com (note underscore).

For further information, contact Primus Prize chair Barbara Bannon, Salt Lake City, bbannon@xmission.com, or ATCA chair Chris Rawson, Pittsburgh, cchr@pitt.edu.