2015 LPTW Awards to Honor Mary-Mitchell Campbell, Kathleen Chalfant, Donyale Werle and More Next Month

On Monday, March 16, 2015, the League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW), a not-for-profit organization committed to promoting visibility and increasing opportunities for women in the professional theatre, is pleased to recognize the talents of five outstanding women: Mary-Mitchell Campbell, Kathleen Chalfant, Sandra A. Daley-Sharif, Rachel Dickstein, and Donyale Werle. The awards will be presented at the League's 2015 Awards Celebration & Big Mingle to be held at 6:30 pm on Monday, March 16 at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street).

Tickets to attend the Awards Ceremony & Big Mingle reception are $100 for members, $135 for non-members, and $250 for VIP (which include premium seating). All tickets are available online at http://theatrewomen.org/2014/12/18/3198/

In connection to the Awards, the LPTW is running its annual online Auction. Two time Tony-Award winner Katie Finneran (Noises Off, It's Only A Play) is the Auction Celebrity Chair; Pat Addiss and Mari Lyn Henry are the Co-Chairs. The auction runs from February 13 - March 17, 2015 at BiddingforGood.com. Special prizes include tickets to Broadway's It's Only a Play (with a special backstage visit with Finneran) and a personalized voicemail recording from Hugh Jackman. The auction is open to the public.

Kathleen Chalfant, Tony Nominee and Drama Desk Award-winner, will be presented with The Lifetime Achievement Award by Sybille Pearson.

The Ruth Morley Design Award was initiated in 1998 in honor of costume designer Ruth Morley, one of the profession's leading designers for theatre and film who also served on the LPTW Board of Directors. It is given annually to an outstanding female theatre designer in the field of costumes, scenery, lighting, or special effects. This year the award will be presented by Anna Louizos to set designer Donyale Werle, 2012 Tony-Award winner for Peter and the Starcatcher.

In April 1999, the LPTW received a bequest from the Lucille Lortel estate to establish a fund which would be given annually to "an aspiring woman in any discipline of theatre who is showing great creative promise and deserves recognition and encouragement." This year's award will be given to Rachel Dickstein, Artistic Director of Ripe Time by Ellen McLaughlin.

The Lee Reynolds Award, in memory of producer and League member Lee Reynolds, is given annually to a woman or women active in any aspect of theatre whose work through the medium of theatre has helped to illuminate the possibilities for social, cultural or political change. Mary-Mitchell Campbell, one of Broadway's top music directors and orchestrators, will be presented with the award for the work she does with Artists Striving to End Poverty (ASTEP).

The Josephine Abady Award is given in memory of Josephine R. Abady, a stage and artistic director, and leader of the nonprofit theatre movement in the United States. The award is given annually to a woman emerging theatre artist who has created work of cultural diversity. This year's recipient is Sandra A. Daley-Sharif, Obie Award Winner for 48 Hours in Harlem. She will be presented with the award by Dael Orlandersmith.

Tickets to attend the Awards Ceremony & Big Mingle reception are $100 for members, $135 for non-members, and $250 for VIP (which include premium seating). All tickets are available online at http://theatrewomen.org/2014/12/18/3198/. The Pershing Square Signature Center is located at 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

BIOGRAPHIES:

MARY-MITCHELL CAMPBELL (The Lee Reynolds Award) is a musical director, orchestrator and arranger for musical theatre. She is also the Founder/Executive Director of ASTEP-Artists Striving to End Poverty, an organization committed to using the arts to teach health education and life skills to children around the world. Her New York theatre credits include Company (Drama Desk Award - Orchestrations); Big Fish; The Addams Family; Sweeney Todd; Road Show; Next to Normal; Hello Again (Drama Desk nomination - Orchestrations), Allegro. She performs often in concerts with Kristin Chenoweth, Laura Benanti, Jonathan Groff, and Raul Esparza. Coming Home, a concert she did with Kristin Chenoweth, was just released on CD and DVD this month. Mary-Mitchell loves performing pop music as well, and has performed with Carole King, Alicia Keys, Katy Perry, James Taylor, Josh Groban, and Stevie Wonder. She has served on the faculties of NYU, Boston College and Juilliard. She is originally from North Carolina.

KATHLEEN CHALFANT (The Lifetime Achievement Award) Broadway: Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk nominations); City Center Encores! Bloomer Girl (Dolly Bloomer), Racing Demon (directed by Richard Eyre), Dance with Me, M. Butterfly. Off-Broadway: Wit, for which she won the Drama Desk, OBIE, Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Awards; A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing; Tales from Red Vienna by David Grimm; Somewhere Fun by Jenny Schwartz; Miss Ovington and Dr. Dubois by Clare Coss; Red Dog Howls by Alex Dinelaris; Painting Churches by Tina Howe; Family Week by Beth Henley; Vita & Virginia; Deadman's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl; Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell; Far Away by Caryl Churchill; The Vagina Monologues; Nine Armenians (Drama Desk nomination); Twelve Dreams (written and directed by James Lapine); Henry V (New York Shakespeare Festival, Callaway Award); True History and Real Adventures (by Sybille Pearson, directed by Michael Mayer), among many others. Regional Theater: McCarter Theatre Center, Guthrie Theater, Arena Stage, Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, Mark Taper Forum, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Sundance Playwrights Lab, and others. Her extensive film and television credits include In Bed with Ulysses by Alan Adelson, The Bath by Mark Lundsten; Isn't It Delicious by Michael Kelly; Lillian by Amanda Pennington (Cannes short film corner 2013); Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight for HBO; The People Speak by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove; Bob Roberts; Five Corners; Jumpin' at the Boneyard; Dream Work (with Eric Bogosian); A Price Above Rubies; The Last Days of Disco; Side Streets; Random Hearts; Company Man, Kinsey, The Affair (Showtime), Elementary (Fox), House of Cards (Netflix), Mercy (NBC), Rescue Me (Ma Garrity), Book of Daniel (Katherine), The Guardian (CBS), The Laramie Project, Benjamin Franklin, A Death in the Family for PBS Masterpiece Theatre, Spin City, LA Law. She is the recipient of a 1996 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance; 1998 Connecticut Critics Circle Award (WIT); 2000 Ovation, Garland, and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards (Los Angeles) for WIT. She received the Drama League and Sidney Kingsley Awards for her body of work. Kathleen is a founding member of Women's Project and sits on the boards of The Vineyard Theatre, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids; the advisory board of New York Foundation for the Arts; was a member of the Board of Advisors of MSF/Doctors Without Borders for 5 years; and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Cooper Union in June 2010. Ms. Chalfant has recently been part of a new initiative of Beyond the Wire called The Addiction Project.

SANDRA A. DALEY-SHARIF (The Josephine Abady Award)has spent over twenty years as a producer, director, actress, playwright and dramaturg, and is the recipient of an Obie Award for 48 Hours in Harlem, the annual event of Harlem9, an alliance of Black theatre producers of which she is founder/member. Since 2009, she is founder and Producing Artistic Director of Liberation Theatre Company, home to emerging Black playwrights. She facilitates LTCs Black Playwrights' Group. She is a member of Abingdon Theatre Company's Playwriting Group and NewShoe Theatre, a playwright-director organization that supports work and careers and encourages collaborations among women directors and playwrights. She is also a member of New Perspectives Theater's Women's Work Project where her one-act Jake was produced in August 2012 and where she is now working on her full-length play Les Freres, inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs. As an actor, Sandra's credits include Broadway: The Miracle Worker (Circle in the Square/Director: Kate Whoriskey), Off-Broadway: First Breeze of Summer (Signature Theater/Director: Ruben Santiago Hudson), Defying Gravity (The American Place Theater/Director: Michael Wilson), As Bees in Honey Drown (Drama Dept./Director: Mark Brokaw), Regional: King Hedley (Philadelphia Theatre Co./Director: Seret Scott); July 7th, 1994 (Humana Festival/Director: Lisa Peterson); Black Orpheus (Crossroads Theatre/Director: Rick Khan); Night Sky (Philadelphia Theatre Co./Director: Jack Hofsiss). Television: The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Unchained Memories, and most recently, Showtime's The Affair.

RACHEL DICKSTEIN (The LPTW Lucille Lortel Award) is the Artistic Director and lead director/deviser of Ripe Time. Recently, Rachel premiered her adaptation The World is Round (based on Gertrude Stein, with music and lyrics by Heather Christian) at BAM-Fisher. TWIR was a finalist for the 2014 Richard Rodgers Award and won a 2014 Obie Award, Special Citation. Rachel Dickstein devised, choreographed, and directed the world premiere of Septimus and Clarissa (adapted by Ellen McLaughlin from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway) (Joe A. Calloway, Drama Desk and Drama League nominations) at Baruch Performing Arts Center, Fire Throws (based on Antigone) at 3LD Art & Technology Center, Innocents (based on Wharton's The House of Mirth, co-adapted with Emily Morse) at the Ohio Theatre, Betrothed (based on stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, Chekhov and S. Ansky) at the Ohio Theatre. Other: Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd's In What Language? at the Asia Society, Redcat, and Pica, The Trojan Women by Ellen McLaughlin/Euripides, Anon(ymous) by Naomi Iizuka, Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, Machinal by Sophie Treadwell (Purchase College). Nominee: 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award, Alan Schneider Award; recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program Award, MAP Fund award, Drama League artist residency and Fall Production Fellowship. Yale College, B.A. Trained with Complicite, Norman Taylor (Lecoq), Dell 'Arte, and I Ketut Kantor (Bali, Indonesia). Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance at the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College, SUNY. Rachel is developing And Suddenly a Kiss..., a site specific collaboration with designer Susan Zeeman Rogers commissioned by People's Light and Theatre Company and Sleep, a new adaptation of Haruki Murakami's story by Naomi Iizuka to be co-produced by Ripe Time and the Play Company.

DONYALE WERLE (The Ruth Morley Design Award) is a Brooklyn, NY based theatrical set and urban garden designer. She is the Co-Chair of the Pre/Post Production Committee for the Broadway Green Alliance. Donyale works with salvaged and non-traditional materials to create unique, handcrafted sets and gardens. She has received a Tony, Obie, Lucille Lortel, Henry Hewes and a Drama Desk & Outer Critic's Circle nomination. Donyale speaks publicly in the US & UK and teaches classes on sustainable design practices for theater. Credits include, Broadway: Peter & the Starcatcher (2012 Tony Award), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (2011 Tony nomination), Allegiance (upcoming).Off-Broadway: Brooklynite by Michael Mayer & Peter Lerman (Vineyard), Encores Off-Center: Little Shop of Horrors, The New Brain, The Wild Party (upcoming), Tick, Tick, Boom!, Faust, Pump Boys & the Dinettes (City Center), The Legend of Georgia McBride (upcoming-MCC), Too Much Sun (Vineyard), The Explorer's Club (MTC), Broke-ology (Lincoln Center), The North Pool (Vineyard), BARE (New World Stages), Taming of the Shrew (Theater for a New Audience),Jollyship the Whizbang (Ars Nova). Regional: Somewhere (Hartford Stage), Once on this Island (Papermill Playhouse), The Legend of Georgia McBride (Denver Center), Allegiance, The Musical, Rocky Horror (The Old Globe). Donyale is a member of the Wingspace Design Collective.

The Pershing Square Signature Center, the permanent home of Signature Theatre, is a three-theatre facility on West 42nd Street designed by Frank Gehry Architects to host Signature's three distinct playwrights' residencies and foster a cultural community. The Center is a major contribution to New York City's cultural landscape and provides a venue for cultural organizations that supports and encourages collaboration among artists throughout the space. In addition to its three intimate theatres, the Center features a studio theatre, rehearsal studio, a bookstore, and Signature Café and Bar, open to public from noon-midnight Tuesdays - Sundays. For more information on renting the Center, visit www.signaturetheatre.org/rentals.

The League of Professional Theatre Women is a not-for-profit 501 (c)(3) organization. It presents numerous events each year as part of its mission to promote visibility and increase opportunities for women in the field. None of its work is possible without generous philanthropic support. The League recently celebrated its thirtieth anniversary, and boasts a membership of nearly 500 women theatre professionals in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. League members are actors, administrators, agents, arrangers, casting directors, choreographers, company managers, composers, critics, designers, directors, dramaturges, dramatists, educators, general managers, historians, journalists, librettists, lyricists, press agents, playwrights, producers, stage managers, and theatre technicians. To find out more about how you can support its endeavors, please visit the website www.theatrewomen.org and click on the "Support Us" tab.