NEW YORK CITY: The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation has announced the recipients of their 2024 Idea Awards for Theatre, three categories of grants awarded to adventurous new voices in playwriting and musical theatre, as well the visionary playwrights who have inspired and blazed trails before them.
Honoring accomplished playwrights who have created significant, idea-driven works throughout their career, the 2024 Tooth of Time Distinguished Career Award will be presented to Luis Valdez. The award comes with a $25,000 prize for the recipient.
Daria Miyeko Marinelli is the recipient of this year’s Ollie New Play Award. Two Vivace Musical Theatre Awards will be presented: one to AG, MILCK, and Sam Chanse, and another to Dan Fishback. Recognizing emerging talent and original work with ambitious theatrical ideas, both awards are bestowed to each recipient with a $25,000 prize.
Luis Valdez is regarded as one of the most important and influential American playwrights and filmmakers living today. His internationally renowned, Obie-winning theatre company, El Teatro Campesino (the Farm Workers’ Theater) was founded by Valdez in 1965 in the midst of the United Farm Workers (UFW) struggle and the Great Delano Grape Strike in California’s Central Valley. In 1978, he wrote and directed Zoot Suit. He has received the George Peabody Award for excellence in television, the Presidential Medal of the Arts, the Governor’s Award for the California Arts Council, and Mexico’s prestigious Aguila Azteca Award given to individuals whose work promotes cultural excellence and exchange between the U.S. and Mexico. In 2016, he was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by president Obama at the White House.
Daria Miyeko Marinelli is a playwright, screenwriter, and climate storyteller who delights in using the heist genre, stories of wildness, and bifurcating narrative structures to challenge current and construct new cultural mythologies. Daria’s work has been performed at La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival, Atlantic Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, HERE Arts Center, and EST-LA, among others. Daria serves on the board of directors for the New Harmony Project and Fault Line Theatre. Mx. Marinelli was a finalist for the Black List’s NRDC Climate Storytelling Fellowship and the 2024 Sundance Institute/Alfred P. Sloan Grant.
AG is an L.A.-based producer, Grammy-nominated songwriter, and mix engineer. With over 600 song placements to date, she has become one of the most prolific producers in the world of film and TV. She works closely with music supervisors, trailer houses, ad agencies, and film studios. She is also in a band called the Rescues, who are currently working on a musical adaptation of The Lost Boys. Additionally, AG and artist MILCK are working on a musical for La Jolla Playhouse. AG has made it her mission to bring diversity to the sync world in any way she can.
MILCK, born Connie K. Lim, is a powerful voice for change in today’s music scene. Best known for her viral anthem “Quiet,” which became a global rallying cry for women’s rights, MILCK has collaborated with notable artists such as John Legend, Natasha Bedingfield, and LeAnn Rimes. Beyond her music, MILCK is expanding her creative reach into theatre. La Jolla Playhouse has commissioned her to develop The Family Album, a musical exploring themes of healing and family, set to premiere in early 2026.
Sam Chanse is the author of plays, including What you are now (Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan & the Civilians), Disturbance Specialist (the Public Theater & National Asian American Theatre Company’s Out of Time), Trigger (Lark Venturous Fellowship), Fruiting Bodies (Ma-Yi Theater), and Monument, or Four Sisters (A Sloth Play) (Magic Theatre). She is currently developing a new musical, The Family Album, with collaborators MILCK, AG, and Jess McLeod, commissioned by La Jolla Playhouse. A native New Yorker, she was based in San Francisco for several years, when she served as artistic director of Asian American arts nonprofit Kearny Street Workshop and developed work as a writer and performer at various artistic homes. TV: The Good Doctor (ABC); MFA: Columbia University and NYU/Tisch GMTWP.
Dan Fishback has been making theatre and music in NYC since 2003. His musical The Material World, was called “the best downtown musical in years” by Time Out New York in 2012. Fishback’s 2011 solo performance thirtynothing confronted the then-under-discussed history of the early AIDS epidemic. In 2013, Fishback founded the Helix Queer Performance Network, a programming platform designed to bring queer generations together and redress inequities in the world of queer arts and culture. He directed Helix’s slate of intergenerational festivals, workshops, and public events through the platform’s conclusion in 2020.
Theatrical agent Bret Adams and his partner, Dr. Paul Reisch, loved the theatre with great passion. As a theatrical agent, Bret shepherded the careers of many actors, writers and directors and designers. After Bret and Paul’s passing, in 2006 and 2015 respectively, their eponymous foundation was created at their bequest. The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation champions visionary theatre writers in their creation of expansive, illuminating, and idea-driven theatre. Nominations for all three awards are accepted exclusively from the foundation’s board of artistic advisors.
NEW YORK CITY: The National Theatre Conference (NTC) has announced Alex Lin as the recipient of the Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, presented annually to recognize an outstanding emerging playwright. Lin and her play Chinese Republicans were unanimously selected by NTC’s Stavis Committee, who were drawn to her bold, unique voice. She will be honored with the award and an honorarium of $2,000 during NTC’s annual meeting in New York in Jan. 2025. A reading of Chinese Republicans, directed by Chay Yew, will be presented to the gathering and invited guests. A moderated discussion of the play and Lin’s career will follow the reading.
Alex Lin calls herself “just a girl from Jersey.” Her plays have been developed at Roundabout, Second Stage, NYTW, MTC, Rattlestick, the O’Neill, South Coast Rep, New Harmony, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Two River, Playwrights Realm, Central Square Theatre, Amphibian Stage, Theater Mu, and Cape Cod Theater Project. As an actor, she has performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, HVSF, Ma-Yi, Ojai Playwrights Conference, New Victory, Fault Line, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Jewish Plays Project, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. She is a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist and Weissberger Award nominee.
