Shaina Taub
(Photo by Emilio Madrid for Broadway.com)
Tony winner Shaina Taub is to be honored by the Dramatists Guild of America for her score for Suffs. Taub will be presented with the Frederick Loewe Award, presented annually for achievement in a theatrical score, at the Guild’s annual awards ceremony on April 28.
For his play The Ally, Itamar Moses (book writer for the current Broadway musical Dead Outlaw) is the recipient of the Hull-Warriner Award, presented annually to an author in recognition of their play dealing with controversial subjects involving the fields of political, religious or social mores of the times. The other finalists for the Hull-Warriner Award are Will Aronson and Hue Park for Maybe Happy Ending; Leslye Headland for Cult of Love; Amy Herzog for An Enemy of the People; Ife Olujobi for Jordans; and Paula Vogel for Mother Play.
Peter Parnell will be honored with the Flora Roberts Award, presented to a dramatist in recognition of distinguished work in the theater and to encourage the continuation of that work, while Morgan McGuire and Kristiana Rae Colon will be co-recipients of the Lanford Wilson Award, recognizing an early-career or emerging writer. Clarence Coo and C.A. Johnson will both receive the Horton Foote Playwriting Award, funded by the Richenthal Foundation, recognizing work that “seeks to plumb the ineffable nature of being human.”
The DLDF Defender Award is selected by the board of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund in recognition of an individual’s (or team of individuals’) efforts in support of free expression in the dramatic arts. This year, the DLDF board has named drama teacher Jereme Anglin, on behalf of the ArtQuest theater program at Santa Rosa High School, as one of this year’s recipients. The other recipients selected are Dean Jahnsen and Leila Paine, on behalf of their fellow students at Santa Rosa High School, who led a fight against the school’s attempt to shut down their production of Dog Sees God and then helped create a new theatrical work, [REDACTED], to comment on their experience; Brent Lindsay, artistic director of The Imaginists theater company of Santa Rosa, who helped the students create [REDACTED], and The Mercury Theater of Petaluma, for providing a new home for Dog Sees God after performances were suspended at the high school.
As previously announced, David Henry Hwang (Yellow Face) will receive this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Since its inception in 1919, the Dramatists Guild of America has been the professional association for playwrights, librettists, lyricists and composers writing for the American stage.