Obies, Beacon and Black List Commissions, and More

NEW YORK CITY: The 69th annual Obie Awards, which celebrated the 2025 season of Off-Broadway theatre, were held on Jan. 31, in a ceremony hosted by Frank DiLella and Michael Urie. The most recognized productions included Nazareth Hassan’s Bowl EP at the Vineyard Theatre, which won Outstanding New Play; Morgan Bassichis’s Off-Broadway run of Can I Be Frank?, which won a Playwriting award and a Directing award for Sam Pinkleton (also recognized for ta-da!); the Public Theater’s Pericles, which garnered several Acting and Design awards, including for the performance of Crystal Lucas-Perry (also recognized for The Great Privation); and Under the Radar’s Show/Boat: A River, which garnered a Sustained Achievement in Directing nod for David Herskovits and an Acting award for Stephanie Weeks.

The Wind and the Rain: A Story About Sunny’s Bar by Sarah Gancher also received a Playwriting award. abigail jean-baptiste (Chiaroscuro) and Paul Lazar (The Barbarians) also won for Directing, with Whitney White (Walden, Liberation) recognized for Sustained Achievement in Directing. Winning performers also included Bulbul Chakraborty for Rheology and Quincy Tyler Bernstine for Well, I’ll Let You Go. Sustained Achievement in Performance awards went to Paul Sparks for Grangeville and Stephanie Berry for The Gospel at Colonus.

Lifetime Achievement Awards were given to Carmelita Tropicana, a performance artist, playwright, lecturer and Latina comedian, and Kate Valk, founding member and director of the Wooster Group. The Ross Wetzsteon Award went to Pregones/PRTT. Producer John Del Gaudio received the Michael Feingold Award. The inaugural Morgan Jenness Award, named for the late dramaturg/activist, was given to Nicky Paraiso. For the full list of winners, visit the Obies’ website.

NEW YORK CITY: Colt Coeur, in partnership with Shea Theatricals, has awarded playwright Alex Lin and her play The Translator with the inaugural Beacon Commission. This new program commissions new plays by women and nonbinary artists that combat the erasure of history, partly in response to the Executive Order released on March 27, 2025, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The new commission aims to uplift work that can be seen as a “beacon” in politically turbulent times, as “the stories we see onstage serve both as a warning of what history has taught us, as well as a celebration of what the world can be.”

In addition to a traditional artist fee, the Beacon Commission will offer the playwright two workshops, culminating in a public reading, and support collaboration with a director, actors, and a designer. Lin will collaborate with director Cara Hinh. The Translator, a meditation on freedom and its limits, is inspired by Tye Leung, the first Chinese-American woman to vote in a U.S. election.

Lin’s plays have been produced at Roundabout, Second Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, Manhattan Theatre Club, the O’Neill, South Coast Rep, New Harmony, Two River Theater, Playwrights Realm, Atlantic Theater Company, and more. Acting credits include NYTW, Actors Theatre of Louisville, New Victory, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Ma-Yi, Fault Line, Two River, Commonwealth Shakespeare, and AMC’s The Audacity. She is a Blackburn finalist, Stavis Award winner, and two-time Kennedy Center Paul Stephen Lim Award winner, with residencies at Colt Coeur, Rattlestick, Working Theater, and BMI. She is a Juilliard graduate and is on Forbes’s “30 under 30” list.

NEW YORK CITY: The Movement Theatre Company has announced the recipients of its commissions with The Black List, which connects writers, filmmakers, and storytelling industry professionals globally. Ankita Raturi has received their joint Ladder Commission, which includes $10,000 and the chance to work with the Movement to write and develop a new play that will culminate in a workshop in 2027. The Movement has also announced its inaugural Jody Falco and Jeffrey Steinman Commission, which has been awarded to Carolina Đỗ and includes $5,000 to write and develop a new play.

Raturi is a writer and teaching artist who grew up in capital cities, pediatric gastroenterology offices, and the bisexual closet. She writes hyper-theatrical works in English, Hindi/Urdu, and sometimes Bahasa Indonesia about living between cultural identities and contending with the ongoing legacies of colonization. Her plays include नेहा & Neel (Artists at Play), Fifty Boxes of Earth (Theater Mu, Playwrights’ Center, The COOP), No One Plays Badminton in America (Roundabout Theatre Company, Playwrights Realm, Artists at Play), The Elephant is Very Like (New York Theatre Workshop, Wesleyan Center for the Arts), and Sahi Vaqt Pe or The One with the Biological Clock (Theater Masters).

Đỗ is a theatremaker, community organizer, and proud descendant of Vietnamese freedom fighters and refugees who explores how theatre can be a tool for rebellion and collective healing. She is the associate director for community engagement at PlayCo, co-founding producing artistic leader of the Sống Collective, creative director of Mai House Studio and Betterfly Productions, and founding member of Asians4Abolition. She is an alum of the Soho Rep Writer-Director Lab, Fresh Ground Pepper Playground, Ma-Yi Lab, and Orchard Project labs. Residencies include MacDowell, JACKLabs, The Hearth, Fault Line Theatre, Piper Theatre, and Naked Angels. She was a finalist for the Sokhary Chau Fellowship, Leah Ryan Fund, BricLab, Bushwick Starr, and O’Neill. Her play Ăn Chơi: eat. play. rage. was shortlisted for the 2025 Yale Drama Series Prize.

The finalist for the Ladder Commission is Aditi Pradhan. Semifinalists for the Ladder Commission are Diane Exavier, Jesse Jae Hoon, Utkarsh Rajawat, Nathan Yungerberg, Azudi Onyejekwe, T.J.L, Mariam Bazeed, Jaymes Sanchez, Leonardo Gonzalez Dominguez, Russell Nichols, Cris Eli Blak, Hera Anderson, Liz Morgan, and Sandra A. Daley-Sharif.

The Movement first partnered with the Black List in January 2022 when the platform expanded into theatre. Their first Ladder Commission was awarded to Marco Antonio Rodriguez for his play Walk-In. This year, Rodriguez’s adaptation of Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao runs Feb. 21-April 5 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

BUFFALO, N.Y.: Buffalo’s Alleyway Theatre has announced playwright Kevin Cirone and his play His Girl Watson: A Sherlock Noir as the recipient of the 2025-26 Maxim Mazumdar New Play Award. The award comes with a cash prize and a world premiere production in June. The Mazumdar Award has been presented annually since 1989 in memory of Canadian actor/playwright Maxim Mazumdar, who contributed to the Alleyway Theatre’s early growth.

Set in post-World War II Boston, Cirone’s His Girl Watson: A Sherlock Noir follows Dr. Josie Watson, who is sent to deliver pills to an agoraphobic narcoleptic on Baker Street, gets drawn into a dark international conspiracy, and hunts for Sherlock Holmes. Cirone is a Kennedy Center Playwriting alumnus and former actor from the Boston area who has been entertaining audiences in New England, New York, and beyond for over 20 years. Stage works include The Good Deli (Moonbox Productions), Creative License, A New Musical (New York International Fringe Festival), Nomination (Huntington Theatre Company), Voice of Reason, A Zoom Play (Umbrella Stage Company), and Boston Theater Marathon entries Three Seats, Virginia Slim With Ten Minutes to Go, For Time, and Whiskey Neat.

The award had 839 entries this year, judged by a volunteer group of 75 theatre artists over 18 months. The next Mazumdar Award submission window will open for new, unproduced full-length plays, March 1-15. Finalists were There Are Black Roses Under The Sun by Cris Blak, Compost by Matt Hoverman, and Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake In Her Lungs by Chelsea Wooley. Semifinalists were The Haunting of Hooverton Hotel by Jacob Albarella and Jason Kaiser, Lumin by Emma Gibson, The Appliance Department by Bella Poynton, Walking While Black by Philip Christian Smith, and We Are The Forgotten Beasts by Christian St. Croix.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Theatre Washington, in partnership with Craig Pascal, community advocate and husband of Victor Shargai, have announced the recipients of the 2026 Victor Shargai Leadership Award: playwright, director, dancer, and actor Psalmayene 24, and philanthropist and theatre champion Share Fund, led by Julie Jacobson and Pamela Nash. These awards recognize individuals, groups, or institutions whose service and creative leadership have strengthened Washington, D.C.’s theatre community.

In the 1990s, Psalmayene 24 immersed himself in D.C.’s dance, music, spoken word, and theatre communities after graduating from Howard University. Since then, he’s led and created projects like Cinderella: the Remix at Imagination Stage, Word Becomes Flesh at Theater Alliance, Dear Maple at Mosaic Theater Company, Out of the Vineyard at Joe’s Movement Emporium, Metamorphoses at Folger Theatre, and Mosaic’s upcoming Young John Lewis. He is a six-time nominee and two-time recipient of the Helen Hayes Award. Psalmayene 24 is a passionate advocate for local communities, amplifying voices and narratives often marginalized in mainstream theatre. He’s collaborated with artists like Tony Thomas, Kate Bryer, Nick “the 1da” Hernandez, and Paige Hernandez, and organizations like Imagination Stage, Studio Theatre, and Mosaic Theater Company.

Share Fund is a grant-making organization founded by Julie Jacobson in 2011, with support from executive director Pamela Nash. It focuses on building a stronger D.C. region and serving its people, with broad gifts across the nonprofit sector. The Fund has distributed gifts totaling $117 million dollars since its inception. In 2025, 275 organizations received grants, including 39 D.C. theatres. They include Atlas Performing Arts Center, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Signature Theatre, and TCG member theatres Arena Stage, Folger Shakespeare Library, GALA Hispanic Theatre, Imagination Stage, Keegan Theatre, Mosaic Theater Company, Round House Theatre, Theater J, Woolly Mammoth, and more.

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