MIAMI: The Ohio State University Libraries and Ohio State University Arts and Humanities have announced Ricky J. Martinez as the recipient of this year’s Margo Jones Award. He will receive the award at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay, Fla., at a ceremony on April 30.
The award is given to theatre artists who have demonstrated a significant impact and understanding of playwriting, and who encourage the living theatre. The honor commemorates Margo Jones, who founded a theatre in Dallas in 1947, and developed plays, including Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke.
Martinez is the artistic director of the New Theatre in Miami. His collaborations with playwrights on more than fifty world premieres, which have earned both Pulitzer Prize and Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award nominations and wins. His directing credits include working at the MFA Playwrights’ Workshop at the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival, Stanford University’s National Center for New Plays, and the Ignition Fest at Victory Gardens Theater, among others. Martinez serves on the executive committee for the National New Play Network and on the advisory board of the Latino Theatre Commons, and he has been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. Martinez is also involved in the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the National Fund for New Musicals, PlayPenn, and San Antonio’s Luminaria Festival. In his hometown, he shepherds new work at the Miami 1-Acts Festival.
