CHICAGO: American Blues Theater, has announced that the recipient of the 2025 Blue Ink Award is Alyssa Haddad-Chin, for her play You Should Be So Lucky. As part of the award, Haddad-Chin receives a $3,000 cash prize and a staged reading at American Blues Theater. Directed by Helen Young, the reading will be presented this summer as part of the 2025 Blue Ink Playwriting Festival on Saturday, Aug. 9, along with new work by finalists Erlina Ortiz (She Wore Those Shoes), and LaDarrion Williams (Hurt People).
Alyssa Haddad-Chin is a Lebanese American playwright, educator, and arts facilitator. She is a 2024-25 Target Margin Theater Institute fellow, commissioned by Keen Company for their 2024-25 Keen Teens series, and a 2025 artist at the Mercury Store. Her play The Newlywed Game won B Street Theatre’s 2023 New Comedies Festival and received its world premiere in June 2024. She is a New Georges affiliated artist, a resident artist at Breaking and Entering Theater Collective, and the company and community manager at Target Margin Theater. A collection of her short plays, And Now a Little Something for the Ladies (among others), is published with 1319 Press. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
NORTH HAVEN, CONN.: The Burry Fredrik Foundation has named costume and scenic designer Arthur Wilson as the recipient of the 2025 Burry Fredrik Design Fellowship and its $10,000 award. Established in 2017, the fellowship helps launch the careers of graduates from David Geffen School of Drama’s Design program. Each year, the faculty selects one graduating scenic, costume, lighting, projection, or sound designer as the Burry Fredrik Design Fellow, who receives a cash award.
Wilson, a Southern California native, graduated from California State University, Fullerton, with a double bachelor’s degree in music (opera singing) and theatre. As an undergrad he pursued an emphasis in musical theatre and opera performance. He also worked in the costume shop and developed a love for design. Costume design credits include Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, upcoming this spring at Yale Rep; Cactus Queen and Uncle Vanya (Geffen School). Assistant set design: Clueless: The Musical (West End), Harvey (Laguna Playhouse), and Skylight (Chance Theater).
INDIANAPOLIS: The New Harmony Project has announced the lineup for their 38th annual spring residency in New Harmony, Ind. Following an intensive selection process with over 530 applications, a diverse selection panel made recommendations for the 2025 company. The NHP’s Celebration of New Plays will feature these writers at the residency, along with projects from the Productions in Residence program, May 30-31.
The group of selected artists includes Brittany Allen (Redwood, Portland Center Stage), Deborah Asante (Asante Arts Institute, Indianapolis), Kimberly Belflower (John Proctor is the Villain), Matthew Chong (David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, Lessons), Margot Carmody (Carnegie Mellon University, Olvidame – Forget Me), Kristiana Rae Colón (The Chi), Ty Defoe (Ojibwe and Oneida Nations, Firebird Tattoo), Maddie Easley (Wyandot Nation, Representatives for Those at Peace), Zachariah Ezer (Black Women in Tech), Miriam Gonzales (10 Seconds), Franky Gonzalez (Bishop Arts Theatre Center playwright-in-residence), Jessica Huang (James Still playwright-in-Residence at the Indiana Repertory Theatre), Monet Hurst-Mendoza (Torera, Alley Theatre), Alex Lin (the Juilliard School, Chinese Republicans), Nehemiah Luckett (Ruby, Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe), Christopher Lysik (University of Iowa, Pierogi Play), Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj (The Factotum, Lyric Opera of Chicago), Gloria Majule (My Father was Shot in the Back of the Head), Vaibu Mohan (Jala Smriti), Abigail Onwunali (Jewel), Phanésia Pharel (The Waterfall), Amalia Oliva Rojas (Columbia University, How to Melt Ice, or How the Coyote Fell in Love with the Butterfly who tried to be a Lizard), Madeline Sayet (Mohegan tribe of Connecticut, Where We Belong), Michael Shayan (AVAAZ), and Mark Valdez and Ashley Sparks (mark-n-sparks, The Most Beautiful Home…Maybe).
For its Productions in Residence program, NHP has partnered with Thrown Stone Theatre Company (Ridgefield, Conn.) to support the development of The Waterfall by Phanésia Pharel. The Waterfall will be directed by Taylor Reynolds (Tambo & Bones). NHP is also continuing to support the development of For My Next Trick... by Michael Shayan.
NEW YORK CITY: The New York Landmarks Conservancy has announced the winners of the 2025 Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards, the Conservancy’s highest honors for excellence in preservation. The award recipients demonstrate outstanding and challenging preservation projects that occur throughout the city.
Shubert Theatre at 225 West 44th Street and Booth Theatre at 222 West 45th Street in Manhattan, the New Victory Theater at 209 West 42nd Street in Manhattan, and Palace Theatre at 1568 Broadway in Manhattan will receive the awards at a ceremony on April 22 at 6 p.m. at the Edison Ballroom.
At the Shubert and Booth Theatres, built in 1912 and 1913, a façade restoration revealed the depths of a unique plaster technique and improved the exteriors of these two theatres. This extensive exterior project cleaned and repaired the three brick and terra cotta facades, and the Booth’s sheet metal cornice. The most compelling work was restoration of the decorative sgraffito, a technique rarely used in New York. This successful project is likely the largest sgraffito reclamation in the city.
Throughout 125 years of changes at the New Victory Theater, one thing has remained the same: the ring of angelic sculptures lining the ceiling dome and looking down on the stage and audience. This project has restored the dome and secured the angels. The repairs included installation of fiber reinforcement across the dome’s flat plaster, re-securing the angelic sculptures at the dome’s perimeter, providing new structural framing and anchorage for the dome medallion, installation of a new painted canvas cove cover, and consolidation of all dome ribs.
The Palace Theatre, originally constructed in 1913, is an iconic part of Broadway and an interior landmark. In an extraordinary feat of engineering and preservation, the 14-million-pound interior has been lifted 30 feet and reinstalled with its full array of opulent historic features intact. The results combine preservation with contemporary functionality. Existing structures, such as super-columns and historic plaster, were preserved, while updated finishes replaced those that had changed over time.
EAST HADDAM, CONN.: Goodspeed Musicals has announced announce that Myjoycia Cezar has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Andrew A. Isen Prize at Goodspeed Musicals. This award is funded through a generous gift given by D.C.-based entrepreneur and musical theatre devotee Andrew A. Isen, and was created to give young people who are in the early stages of professional development financial assistance and encouragement to focus on artistic excellence in musical theatre. The honoree is awarded $5,000 to aid in their pursuit of a career in musical theatre.
Cezar is a stage manager, production manager, and leader. She graduated in 2022 from Northwestern State University of Louisiana with a BFA in production & design. Currently she serves as Goodspeed Musicals’ assistant production manager, in which role she helps coordinate and fulfill production needs for the current and upcoming seasons. Before joining the Goodspeed team, her work has ranged across the country, from stage managing regional theatre in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and North Carolina, to working Off-Broadway in New York City, to stage managing numerous outdoor productions at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio.
NEW HAVEN, CONN.:The Windham-Campbell Prizes have awarded eight writers $175,000 each to support their work and allow them to focus on their creative practice independent of financial concerns. The 2025 theatre recipients are U.K.-based playwrights Roy Williams and Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini.
Known for his nuanced portrayals of race and class, Roy Williams leverages his exquisite powers of observation to reveal how the simmering pressures of contemporary life can explode into unchecked hatred. With his signature style, and across his oeuvre, Williams paints a portrayal of today’s Britain both uncomfortable and undeniably essential. Williams’s accolades include the Visionary Honours Award (2022), the Writers Guild of Great Britain Award (2011), the Alfred Fagon Award (2010 and 1997), the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright (2001), and a nomination for the Olivier Awards (2011). In addition to writing for the stage, Williams also writes for film, television, and radio.
Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini launched on the scene with their debut play Muscovado (2014). A self-described “bionic, queer playwright,” Ibini centers stories from the margins, including from queer and disabled people, and brings them to life with their signature magical realist splendor. Their Olivier-winning play Sleepova (2023) is a love letter to Black girls, and takes as its setting a sleepover among four friends. Ibini is the recipient of the Inevitable Foundation x Loreen Arbus Elevate Collective Award (2024), a Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright (2023), and an Alfred Fagon Audience Award (2015), among other honours. They have written across a variety of mediums including children’s books, for the screen, and audio dramas for BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and Audible. Ibini lives in East London.
