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Oskar Eustis, Lynn Nottage and Others to Present 2014 Otto
Awards
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The sixteenth annual Otto
René Castillo Awards for Political Theatre (executive
producer, Diane Stiles) will be held on Sunday, May 18, 2014
at 2:00 p.m. at the Castillo Theatre (artistic director, Dan
Friedman).
Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public
Theatre, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Lynn Nottage,
and others take the stage to present Otto Awards at the 16th
annual awards celebration. Honorees are:
Ping Chong
+ Company, founded in 1975 with
the mission to create works of theater and art that explore
the intersections of race, culture, history, art, media and
technology in the modern world;
CollaborationTown, a
company that creates original work in NYC that is relevant
beyond traditional theater audiences and speaks to many of
the most pressing contemporary social and political themes;
David
Edgar, leading British playwright
and the past president of the Writers Guild of Great
Britain, known for his adaptation The
Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby;
Katori
Hall, a playwright/performer whose
writings combine often harsh and vivid realities with
imaginative explorations of possibilities, her award-winning
play,The Mountaintop, has received productions all
over the world;
E. Patrick
Johnson, a scholar/artist who has
performed nationally and internationally and has published
widely in the area of race, gender, sexuality and
performance;
Past Otto Award honorees include: Laurie
Anderson, Joseph Chaikin, Kathleen
Chalfant, LAByrinth
Theater Company, the San
Francisco Mime Troupe, Ntozake
Shange, SITI
Company, the Steppenwolf
Theater, Melvin
Van Peebles, Douglas
Turner Ward, Robert
Wilson, among many others.
“The Otto Awards are all about relationships,
about creating connections, a network — a movement. The
politics of ‘political theatre’ are not defined by ideology
or in providing answers. I venture to say that we here in
this room today don’t have answers — and I don’t think
that’s such a bad thing…”
— Diane Stiles, Executive Producer
Otto René Castillo Awards for Political Theatre
About the Otto
Awards: The Otto Awards were
founded in 1998 to recognize, support and connect theatre
companies and artists engaged in creating political,
experimental and community-based theatre. They have been
awarded to 92 theatres and individual theatre artists from
the United States, Austria, Canada, Ecuador, France,
Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Pakistan, Serbia and the
United Kingdom.
About the Castillo
Theatre: The award-winning
Castillo Theatre is the off-off-Broadway theatre of the
national non-profit All Stars Project whose focus is on
human development. In the past 30 years Castillo has
produced over 175 productions — from avant-garde plays to
musical theatre, from improvisational comedy to performance
art — opening up the world of cutting-edge political theatre
to people of all ages. Each
year, more than 6,000 people from the diverse communities of
New York City make up Castillo’s audience. Castillo
serves as a multi-racial home for Black theatre and since
2007 has enjoyed a producing partnership with Woodie King,
Jr.’s New Federal Theatre.
Castillo Theatre
543 W. 42nd
Street, New York, NY 10036 |