The Village Voice, the nation's first and largest alternative weekly newspaper, announced today that esteemed critic and longtime judge of the awards, Michael Feingold, will serve as Obie Chairman for the 59th Annual Village Voice OBIE Awards, to be presented Monday, May 19, at Webster Hall.
"We are very pleased to have
Michael Feingold continue his relationship with the Voice and serve as Obie Chairman for our 59th annual awards," said Josh Fromson, Publisher of the Village Voice. "Michael brings his elevated skill and expertise as an icon of the New York theater community with a deep history and love for the theater and the Obies."
Tom Finkel, the Village Voice's editor-in-chief, welcomed Feingold, saying, "I'm thrilled to have
Michael Feingold back in our midst. To me the Obie Awards have always embodied the Voice's passion for the arts and for downtown theater in particular, and as far as I'm concerned, Michael is the embodiment of the Obies." Among Feingold's tasks as Chairman will be to contribute, as in previous years, an essay to the alternative weekly's Obie Awards issue conveying his thoughts on the theater season.
Feingold, who began contributing to the Voice in 1971, served as its chief Theater critic from 1983 until May 2013, during which time he was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism and a recipient of the coveted
George Jean Nathan Award for excellence in theater criticism. A frequent Obie committee member, he served as Obie Chairman from 2006-2011, returning to the role in 2012-13. He currently writes a monthly essay, Thinking About Theater for Theatermania.com. He is also a produced playwright and translator, whose new version of
Eugene Ionesco's The Killer will be produced in May by Theater for a New Audience, directed by
Darko Tresnjak, with
Michael Shannon in the lead role.
Michael Feingold says "I am so pleased to be involved with the Obies yet again. Nothing makes me happier than another chance to honor some of the dedicated theater artists whose work does so much to enhance our life here in New York."
The Voice's present drama critic, Alexis Soloski, will again serve as secretary to the committee. Her essays, articles, and book and performance reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Modern Drama, Theater Journal, and Theater. She is a frequent guest on BBC radio. She earned her doctorate in theater at Columbia University, where she recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Humanities
The following guest judges will join Feingold and Soloski on the Obie committee:
Kirsten Childs is a musical-theater writer whose show The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin won her, in addition to the Obie, the Kleban, Larson,
Richard Rodgers, Audelco, and Gilman/Gonzalez-Falla awards, as well as Lortel and Drama Desk nominations. She is currently working with
Rajiv Joseph and
Bill Sherman on the musical Fly, with
Charlayne Woodard on the musical Grace, and is developing her own show, at
Playwrights Horizons, exploring the African-American experience in the Wild West. Among her other works, Miracle Brothers was produced at the Vineyard Theater, while Funked Up Fairy Tales was recently staged at the Depot Theater in Westport, NY. She has also written for Disney Theatricals, the American Songbook series at Lincoln Center, the New Electric Company, Works & Process at the
Guggenheim Museum and
City Center Encores! She is a professor at NYUs Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, a member of both the
Dramatists Guild Council and the
Dramatists Guild Fund, and especially proud to be a mentor in TDF's Open Doors program.
Nicky Paraiso is Director of Programming for The Club at La MaMa, and Curator for the annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. He has been an actor, musician, and solo performance artist in New York's downtown theater for over three decades, involved most notably in the work of
Meredith Monk and
Jeff Weiss, among others. He has served on various theater and dance panels and selection committees, currently including the New York Dance and Performance Awards, aka The Bessies.
Tonya Pinkins is a Tony and Obie Award-winning actress who has appeared in television and film, but whose first love is the theater.
Michael Sommers currently covers the New York theater scene for New Jersey Newsroom. [pls check - this shd probably be newjerseynewsroom.com] He is a freelance reviewer of regional theater for The New York Times and recently was named Executive Editor for the annual Best Plays series. A former President of the New York Drama Critics Circle, he has written for various publications for more than 30 years, and previously served as a guest judge for the 1995 Obies.
Rick Sordelet is the most prolific fight director in the U.S., with 60 Broadway productions and 54 first-class productions on five continents to his credit. He has staged fights for hundreds of shows Off-Broadway and in regional theaters, as well as over twelve hundred episodes of daytime television and several first-class films. A board member for the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, he haswon the
Edith Oliver Award for Sustained Excellence from the
Lucille Lortel Foundation, and a Jeff Award for Best Fight Direction for Romeo and Juliet at Chicago Shakespeare.
Founded in 1955 by Voice cultural editor
Jerry Tallmer, The Village Voice OBIE Awards annually honor the best of Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway. Unlike most theater awards, the Obies do not publicize nominations or employ rigid categories. In the conviction that creativity is not competitive, the judges select outstanding artists and productions and may even invent new categories to reward artistic merit. Past winners have included such well-known stars as
Dustin Hoffman,
Meryl Streep,
William Hurt,
Morgan Freeman,
Mos Def,
Felicity Huffman,
Kevin Kline,
Nathan Lane,
Olympia Dukakis,
Denzel Washington,
Glenn Close,
Kevin Bacon,
Alec Baldwin,
Kathy Bates,
James Earl Jones,
Viola Davis, and
Harvey Fierstein, to name a few.
Rosemary R. Jorda, event director for the Village Voice Obie Awards is managing the full OBIE Awards program. Longtime publicist for the Obies, since 1994,
Gail Parenteau, is responsible for booking the co-hosts and presenters.
Stella Artois has returned as the presenting sponsor of the 2014 Obie Awards program.
