Anne Hathaway, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Jesse Tyler Ferguson Among United Solo's 2016 Special Award Nominees

Now in its seventh season, United Solo nominates seven performers for its Special Award.

Since it began, the world's largest solo theatre festival has honored illustrious solo performers. The winner will be announced at the United Solo Closing Ceremony, taking place at Theatre Row in New York on November 20.

This year's nominees are Mike Birbiglia, Kathleen Chalfant, Staceyann Chin, Anne Hathaway, Dael Orlandersmith, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

Comedian and filmmaker Mike Birbiglia pioneered a genre by fortifying stand-up with longform personal narrative. His autobiographical storytelling shows are touchstones of candor and wit. In "Thank God For Jokes," Mr. Birbiglia explored faith and laughter, and found moral dimensions in the disciplined quest to craft meaningful comedy.

Kathleen Chalfant's spellbinding portrayal of Rose Kennedy, the mother of John F. Kennedy, is a study of poise that masks despair in the face of trial. In Laurence Leamer's "Rose," Ms. Chalfant created a devastating performance as a woman claiming her role in a family of flawed, ambitious men at the foreground of history.

Insight and verve distinguish Staceyann Chin's chronicle of a Jamaican childhood and a New York creative and political awakening in "MotherStruck!," directed by Cynthia Nixon. A black lesbian woman for whom getting pregnant was first a nightmare and then a dream, Ms. Chin shared a story of taking stands, making compromises, and finding grace amidst the pressures of patriarchy.

In George Brant's "Grounded," Anne Hathaway gave a master class of nuanced expressive precision as an Air Force fighter pilot returning home from Iraq, thunderstruck by the contrast between visceral memories of combat and a bewildering new identity as a wife and mother. Ms. Hathaway depicted a woman pulled between emotional extremes in a world of brutality and compassion.

In the haunting, bracingly honest "Forever," Dael Orlandersmith evoked her pilgrimage from Harlem to Paris, and her journey to understand her painful upbringing and find redemption in a community of artists, living and dead. Ms. Orlandersmith's lyrical, rhythmic performance harmonized between stark depictions of past sorrow and an irrepressible present vitality.

Daphne Rubin-Vega transformed into an underground dweller capable of gruesome acts of consumption in Aaron Mark's "Empanada Loca." Portraying a modern-day Sweeney Todd inhabiting an abandoned subway tunnel, Ms. Rubin-Vega ferociously embodied the cold fury of an underprivileged New Yorker relishing the defiance of survival in a merciless urban jungle.

The ever-widening gap between the upper and lower classes is always acutely felt by the service industry. In Becky Mode's "Fully Committed," Jesse Tyler Ferguson portrayed an aggrieved waiter in an upscale restaurant, as well as a boatful of entitled socialites and chefs. Mr. Ferguson's dazzling versatility and comic vigor made for a truly appetizing satire.

The winner will join past United Solo Special Award recipients, including Anna Deavere Smith (2010), Patti LuPone (2011), John Leguizamo (2012), Fiona Shaw (2013), Billy Crystal (2014), and James Lecesne (2015).

United Solo will present over 120 shows from six continents between September 15 and November 20 at Theatre Row, where it is a resident company. Tickets priced $20.25, which includes a theatre restoration charge, can be purchased at the Theatre Row Box Office, 410 West 42nd St, NYC; over the phone at 212.239.6200 and online at www.telecharge.com. Full schedule can be found at www.unitedsolo.org.