HowlRound’s Polly Carl and Minneapolis’s Illusion Theater
Among Recipients of National Theatre Conference Awards
Emerging Talents Also Recognized at Annual NYC Meeting Dec. 4-6
![]() (New York City, September 17, 2015) — The National Theatre Conference (NTC), an organization founded in 1925 that meets annually in New York to discuss relevant issues in today’s theatre community and to celebrate outstanding achievement in the American theatre, has named the recipients of its 2015 awards.
HowlRound Director Polly Carl has been named Person of the Year; the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis, under its co-producing directors Michael Robins and Bonnie Morris, is the recipient of the Outstanding Theatre Award; and playwright Jessica Dickey has been selected as the winner of the Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award. All three will be honored and presented with their awards and hold discussions with the membership at The Players club during NTC’s annual meeting in New York, December 4-6, 2015. |
In addition, the weekend will include on-site visits to Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Harlem Hospital’s Herbert Cave Auditorium, in order to celebrate, through panel discussions and noted speakers, Harlem’s voice and culture in the American theatrical landscape
Winners of the Outstanding Theatre Award and the Stavis Playwright Award each receive an honorarium of $1,000.00. The co-producing directors of the Outstanding Theatre are given the opportunity to select an Outstanding Emerging Professional, and Robins and Morris chose Diogo Lopes and Isabel Nelson, artistic directors of the Minneapolis-based physical theatre ensemble, Transatlantic Love Affair. Similarly, the Person of the Year winner picks the annual Paul Green Foundation Award recipient which is also awarded to an emerging talent. Carl chose playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle. Both of these awards also include a $1,000.00 honorarium. |
Announcing this year’s awards, NTC President Risa Brainin, Chair of the Department of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Artistic Director of UCSB’s LAUNCH PAD, stated “The NTC awards recognize excellence at all stages of a professional career in the theatre. We are proud to honor the outstanding contributions of these artists to date, and look forward to following their creative work in the future.”
Biographies
POLLY CARL (Person of the Year) is the Director of HowlRound and the Creative Director of ArtsEmerson at Emerson College. Her work at Emerson is focused on promoting theatre practices around the core principle that theatre is for everyone. She divides her time between theory and practice—between collaborating on the challenges facing our field, and developing and presenting work for the stage. She spent two years as Director of Artistic Development at Steppenwolf Theatre and served eleven years at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, seven as Producing Artistic Director. She regularly dramaturgs, teaches, writes, consults, and mentors. Her PhD in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society is from the University of Minnesota.
In its 40 years, ILLUSION THEATER (Outstanding Theatre) has commissioned or developed almost 500 original mainstage plays that have been staged across the U.S. and worldwide. Illusion productions have received Twin Cities Ivey Awards; two plays have been made into motion pictures; two plays have been finalists for the American Theatre Critics Association’s New Play Award; 10 have been published; and one nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1978, Illusion pioneered the concept of prevention/education plays. The Education Program has since reached beyond the mainstage to touch a national audience through performance, workshops, tours, peer education sites, broadcasts, and educational materials. It is renowned for its effective combination of art and education in addressing issues of vital importance. It has two components: Project TRUST, a national program of a dozen plays and workshops for youth and adults to explore difficult issues they face in their lives; and Theatre Access for Youth, a locally based program that provides primarily disadvantaged youth with extended artist residences, peer education, school touring, and discounted or free student matinees of Illusion performances.
Biographies
POLLY CARL (Person of the Year) is the Director of HowlRound and the Creative Director of ArtsEmerson at Emerson College. Her work at Emerson is focused on promoting theatre practices around the core principle that theatre is for everyone. She divides her time between theory and practice—between collaborating on the challenges facing our field, and developing and presenting work for the stage. She spent two years as Director of Artistic Development at Steppenwolf Theatre and served eleven years at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, seven as Producing Artistic Director. She regularly dramaturgs, teaches, writes, consults, and mentors. Her PhD in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society is from the University of Minnesota.
In its 40 years, ILLUSION THEATER (Outstanding Theatre) has commissioned or developed almost 500 original mainstage plays that have been staged across the U.S. and worldwide. Illusion productions have received Twin Cities Ivey Awards; two plays have been made into motion pictures; two plays have been finalists for the American Theatre Critics Association’s New Play Award; 10 have been published; and one nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1978, Illusion pioneered the concept of prevention/education plays. The Education Program has since reached beyond the mainstage to touch a national audience through performance, workshops, tours, peer education sites, broadcasts, and educational materials. It is renowned for its effective combination of art and education in addressing issues of vital importance. It has two components: Project TRUST, a national program of a dozen plays and workshops for youth and adults to explore difficult issues they face in their lives; and Theatre Access for Youth, a locally based program that provides primarily disadvantaged youth with extended artist residences, peer education, school touring, and discounted or free student matinees of Illusion performances.
Michael Robins (co-producing director) founded Illusion Theater in 1974. He has guided nearly 500 plays to production, directing many of the award-winning works including the performance piece Love and Marriage which played a part in Minnesota’s defeat of the constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. He’s active in the larger arts community, having served as a member of the NEA Creation and Presentation Panel, the Theatre Communications Group/NEA Director Fellows Panel, United Arts, Minnesota Dance Alliance and Minnesota State Arts Board’s Cultural Pluralism Task Force. He’s currently on the boards for Minnesota Citizens for the Arts and the St. Paul Conservatory for the Performing Arts. Bonnie Morris (co-producing director), a founding member of Illusion, is a writer, teacher, actor and dramaturg. She has co-authored all of Illusion’s Education plays, including developing and participating in the research, and leading and creating workshops and trainings. One of these plays, Touch, created the language that is used across the country to talk about sexual abuse in children. She is one of the founders and co-chairs of Partners: Arts and Schools for Students (PASS), a program connecting arts organizations with Twin Cities high schools. Bonnie serves as primary educator in Illusion’s Education programming in Twin Cities schools, as well as in Illusion’s Peer Education program in schools and communities across the U.S. |
JESSICA DICKEY (Stavis Playwright Award) is most known for The Amish Project, which opened at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater to great acclaim from audience and critics alike and continues to be produced around the country and the world. Jessica's next play, Charles Ives Take Me Home premiered at the Rattlestick (Susan Smith Blackburn nomination), while her play Row After Row premiered with the Women's Project at City Center in New York City (Susan Smith Blackburn nomination). Jessica is currently commissioned by Rising Phoenix Repertory and Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Foundation. She is also an actor, most recently appearing the in new Sam Hunter play, Pocatello, at Playwrights Horizons. The Guard is receiving its world premiere production at the Ford's Theater in Washington, DC, opening on September 25, 2015, and is directed by NTC Board member Sharon Ott.
MARY KATHRYN NAGLE (Paul Green Foundation Award) was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Nagle is a 2013 alumnus of the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group where she wrote her play Manahatta which was named a top-three finalist for the 2014 William Saroyan Prize for Playwriting, runner-up for the 2015 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, and on the 2015 Kilroy List. Her play Sliver of a Full Moon focuses on the restoration of tribal jurisdiction to protect Native women from domestic violence and was recently presented in Cherokee, North Carolina and at Yale Law School. Nagle is a graduate of Tulane Law School and a Partner at Pipestem Law Firm PC where she represents Indian Nations and tribal organizations on issues of critical importance before the United States Supreme Court.
DIOGO LOPES (Outstanding Emerging Professional Award), founder and co-artistic director of Transatlantic Love Affair, has been performing, devising, teaching, and directing Physical Theatre and Clown since 2001 in Portugal, Spain, France, the UK and the USA. ISABEL NELSON (Outstanding Emerging Professional Award) is a Twin Cities performer, director, theatre creator, and founder and co-artistic director of Transatlantic Love Affair. In 2012, she received the Twin Cities Ivey Award for Emerging Artist. Transatlantic Love Affair specializes in imaginative, movement-based and collaboratively created theatrical storytelling. Diogo and Nelson are the creators of original works Ballad of the Pale Fisherman, which won a 2012 Twin Cities Ivey Award for Emotional Impact (MN Fringe 2010; Illusion Theater 2012; Jon Hassler Theater 2012), Red Resurrected (MN Fringe 2011; Illusion Theater 2013), Ash Land (MN Fringe 2012), These Old Shoes (MN Fringe Festival 2013), and 105 Proof, or The Killing of Mack "The Silencer” Klein (2015). Transatlantic Love Affair artists hail from backgrounds and trainings as varied as Live Action Set, Sandbox Theater, the Minnesota Shakespeare Company, the University of Minnesota B.F.A./Guthrie program, and the Lecoq-based London International School for Performing Arts (LISPA). |
The NATIONAL THEATRE CONFERENCE is an organization founded in 1925 that meets annually in New York City to celebrate outstanding achievement in the American Theatre. Membership is limited to no more than 150 distinguished leaders from the professional and academic theatre who serve as a “think tank” dedicated to the continued development of theatre in this country. In addition to awards recognizing and celebrating excellence in the theatre, the NTC works actively to promote positive change in the American theatre.
Contact: Sherry Eaker at [email protected]; or call917-239-5467.
Contact: Sherry Eaker at [email protected]; or call917-239-5467.