Jeanine Tesori. (Photo by Rodolfo Martinez)
NEW YORK CITY: Tony-winning composer Jeanine Tesori (Kimberly Akimbo, Fun Home) has been named a 2025-26 Lincoln Center Visionary Artist. This honor will bring several Tesori-related events to Lincoln Center venues during its upcoming season, including a staged concert performance of Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s opera Blue at David Geffen Hall on Nov. 15, a Deaf Broadway performance of Tesori and Brian Crawley’s Violet that will feature actors performing in American Sign Language as the Broadway cast album plays, and two entries in her Cast Album Project in the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 5-6, 2026. The latter live cast recording session is a collaboration between Tesori, Anne Kauffman, and Teneisha Duggan that brings attention to culturally significant musicals by historically marginalized artists that have faded from public memory.
NEW YORK CITY: The Prince Fellowship, in association with the Columbia University School of the Arts, has announced that Giuliana Carullo has received the Prince Fellowship and Miranda Gohh has received the Prince/TTLP Fellowship. The Prince Fellowship, formerly known as the T. Fellowship, was renamed in 2021 to honor producer, director, and T. Fellowship founder Harold Prince, who created the program to usher in the next generation of creative producers. Selected fellows receive a $10,000 stipend, a $20,000 budget to develop a new theatrical production, access to courses in Columbia’s MFA Theatre Management and Producing Program, and mentorship from producers and industry specialists.
NEW YORK CITY: Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced the 2025-26 Science and Technology Project New Play Commissions, as well as this year’s regional development and production grants for Lantern Theater Company, Media Art Xploration, Miners Alley Playhouse, Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, and Seattle Rep. The 2025-26 Sloan New Play Commission recipients and plays are Lily Akerman (Room 407), Milo Cramer (IO), Annalisa Dias (I Believe in the Night), Cori Diaz (i dream of feminist science), Nelson Diaz-Marcano (A Parguera Story), Michael Feldman (Otter Delight (Working Title)), Amanda Keating (RADIO / QUIET), Fernando Buzhar Segall (The Great Vaccine Revolt of 1904!), Ethan Venzon (Haute Plate), and Marcus Yi (Paper Son). For more than 25 years, the EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project has developed over 300 plays that challenge and broaden the view of science in the popular imagination.
NEW YORK CITY: The Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF) has announced that Krystyna Resavy has been selected as SDCF’s 2025-26 Mike Ockrent Fellow. She will work with choreographer Ellenore Scott on Ragtime at Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. Established in 2001 by the family of the late director, the Mike Ockrent fellowship provides an opportunity for an early-career director or choreographer to support an experienced director or choreographer on the production of a big-budget Broadway musical or play. The fellowship offers an in-depth understanding of the skills necessary to create theatre on a Broadway scale.
SDCF has also announced that choreographer and arts leader Dominic Moore-Dunson as its 2025-26 Lloyd Richards New Futures Resident Artist. He will work with co-artistic director Morgan Green at the Wilma Theater. Named for American theatre leader Lloyd Richards, the year-long residency awards mid-career directors or choreographers, increases access to institutional leadership, and supports artists illuminating Black cultural experiences onstage with a $50,000 grant.
Additionally, SDCF’s Lynnette Barkley Fund fellowship recipients were announced. In its inaugural year, the Barkley Fund will support Miguel Bregante, a Spanish-Chilean director; Jessica Chen, a Chinese American dancer, choreographer and artistic director of J CHEN PROJECT; and Youri Kim, a DMV-based theatre director, playwright, and educator. They will each receive a $5,000 award. The program was established by director and choreographer Lynnette Barkley in 2025 to support alumni of SDCF’s professional development program with unrestricted monetary support to advance their careers.
CHICAGO: The Sarah Siddons Society has announced that it will present its 2025 award to Tony-winning actress Beth Leavel, whose Broadway credits include Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, The Prom, The Drowsy Chaperone, Baby It’s You!, Lempicka, Bandstand, Elf, Mamma Mia!, Young Frankenstein, 42nd Street, Crazy For You, The Civil War, Show Boat, and others. This award is presented to an individual who has achieved outstanding artistic achievement in theatre. Leavel will be honored at a benefit on Monday, Nov. 17 at the Arts Club of Chicago. The evening’s program will include musical selections from Leavel’s most memorable shows, performed by Chicago theatre artists and directed by Chistopher Pazdernik, with music direction by Beckie Menzie. The evening, hosted by NBC 5 Chicago features reporter LeeAnn Trotter, will also include the induction of the 2025 Sarah Siddons Society scholarship recipients. All proceeds benefit the Sarah Siddons Society scholarship program for theatre students at Chicago-area universities.
NEW YORK CITY: The Designers Lighting Forum New York (DLFNY) has announced the recipients of its 2025 ICON Awards, which includes theatrical lighting designer Jules Fisher, who is a founding member of Fisher Marantz Stone. He will be honored at the Beacon Awards ceremony on Oct. 29. ICONs are individuals, firms, or companies worthy of veneration for their commitment to advancing the impact of lighting within built environment and their commitment to the greater New York metro design community.
SAN FRANCISCO: PlayGround has announced its 2025-26 Producing Fellows, a vibrant and diverse class of four next-generation theatre leaders, who will work in San Francisco/the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. They are Juliana Morgado Britos, a New York-based director/producer/designer who recently graduated from Brown University; Devin A. Cunningham, a multi-hyphenate theatrical storyteller from Oakland, California who serves as the co-associate artistic director at the African American Shakespeare Company; Jordan Maria Don, an actor, director, and producer who splits her time between Los Angeles and the Bay Area; and Donnalesly Fondjo, an actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, and educator who recently graduated from Ithaca College. They will work part-time with PlayGround’s full artistic staff and national producing teams to develop their skills in theatre production.
NEW YORK CITY: New Dramatists has announced additions to its resident playwright company for the 2025-26 season with its Princess Grace Fellowship recipient, Zoë Rhulen. She is a Colorado-grown, New York-based playwright. Her writing is motivated by wildness, myths, monsters, food, and sexuality. She won the Princess Grace Award in Playwriting for her play Dirt.
ELLICOTT CITY, MD.: Howard County executive Calvin Ball and Howard County Arts Council (HCAC) executive director Coleen West have awarded the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC) and Baltimore Center Stage each with a $12,500 one-time arts grant, made possible through a partnership between the Howard County government and HCAC. The Baltimore Supplemental Arts Grant is available to Baltimore City arts and cultural organizations receiving operating funding during FY2025. It provides programmatic support and supplemental funding to regional arts organizations impacted by federal government funding cuts so they can continue operations, programs, and outreach to Howard County.
ATLANTA: The Alliance Theatre has announced its 2025-26 Spelman Leadership interns: Nina Cajuste and Taylor Mills. Both study theatre at Spelman College. As interns, they will be immersed in various departments at the Alliance and learn from working professionals in arts administration, theatre management, marketing, development, education, and production.