Christine Jones Wins 2011 Ruth Morley Design Award

The League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW), a non-profit organization committed to promoting visibility and increasing opportunities for women in the professional theatre, is pleased to recognize the talents of two outstanding women: the LPTW Lucille Lortel Award and accompanying grant will be presented to Jessica Burr, Artistic Director of Blessed Unrest; and the Ruth Morley Design Award will be given to Tony Award-winning scenic designer Christine Jones. These awards will be presented at the League's 2011 Awards Luncheon, to be held from 12:00 - 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 9 at Sardi's Restaurant.

This Ruth Morley Design Award was initiated in 1998 in honor of costume designer Ruth Morley, one of our profession's leading designers for theatre and film who also served on the LPTW Board of Directors. Christine Jones received a Tony Award for her scenic design of the musical American Idiot and received a Tony nomination for her scenic design of Spring Awakening. Other notable credits include the Broadway productions of Everyday Rapture and The Green Bird, and the off-Broadway production of Coraline. She conceived the Theatre for One, a portable performing arts space for one performer and one audience member (www.theatreforone.com). Full biography follows.

In April 1999, the LPTW received a bequest from the Lucille Lortel estate to establish a fund which would annually provide a grant to an aspiring woman in any discipline of theatre who is showing creative promise and deserves recognition and encouragement. The recipient of this year's Lucille Lortel Award is Jessica Burr, the Artistic Director of Blessed Unrest, an ensemble-based experimental theatre company she co-founded in 1999, which uses the safe structure of training, rehearsal and performance to create an environment where dangerous things can happen. Full biography follows.

Tickets to attend the luncheon and awards ceremony are $65, and are available online at www.BrownPaperTickets.com or by phone: 1-800-838-3006 option 1 (use event code 175569). All service charges included in the ticket price! Sardi's Restaurant is located at 234 West 44th Street, and the event will be held in the Eugenia Room on the 4th floor.

CHRISTINE JONES won a Tony Award ® in 2010 for scene designs for American Idiot, a musical based on the punk rock band Green Day's concept album of the same title. Previously she drew a Tony nomination for her designs for the ground-breaking musical Spring Awakening. Both shows were staged by Michael Mayer. Other outstanding Broadway credits include the scene designs for Everyday Rapture, also directed by Mayer and starring Sherie Renee Scott; and The Green Bird, directed by Julie Taymor, for which Ms. Jones received a Drama Desk nomination.

Off-Broadway career highlights include the designs for the musical Coraline; The Book of Longing, with music by Philip Glass, based on the poems of Leonard Cohen; Much Ado About Nothing for Shakespeare in the Park; Flesh and Blood, Nocturne, and First Love at New York Theatre Workshop; a revival of Lanford Wilson's Burn This starring Ed Norton, Catherine Keener and Dallas Roberts at Signature Theatre; and People Be Heard for Playwrights Horizons. She has designed for numerous regional theatres and opera companies, including New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Minnesota Opera Company, and the Denver Opera Company.

She conceived and is artistic director of Theatre for One (www.theatreforone.com), which describes itself as "A portable performing arts space for one performer and one audience member, that turns public events into private acts, making each performance a singularly intimate exchange."

Raised in Canada, Ms. Jones received an undergraduate degree from Montreal's Concordia University. She holds an M.F.A. from New York University, where she is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Tisch School of the Arts.

JESSICA BURR is the Artistic Director of Blessed Unrest, an ensemble-based experimental theatre company she co-founded in 1999. For Blessed Unrest she has directed ArtCamp SexyTime FootBall, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Nick (a new translation and adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov by Laura Wickens), Doruntine (with Florent Mehmeti of Teatri Oda, Kosovo, in New York and on tour in the Balkans), Measure for Measure and Suzan-Lori Parks'365Days/365Plays. Other directing credits include Pericles, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, and The Love of Don Perlimplin and Belisa in the Garden. Burr graduated from Bard College in 1996 and became a traveling street performer, living and working on sidewalks from Scotland to Morocco with handmade masks and original pieces Layla and Majnun and Zulieka's Love. After a year spent teaching in Poland, she returned to New York City and founded Blessed Unrest with Matt Opatrny, her co-producer and partner. Burr lives in Hell's Kitchen with Matt and their daughter Evelyn.

Blessed Unrest uses the safe structure of training, rehearsal and performance to create an environment where dangerous things can happen. We are a non-profit, experimental theatre company based in New York City and have been generating original work since 1999. Blessed Unrest is the resident company at the Interart Theatre on West 52nd Street in Manhattan. We have also performed at P.S. 122, the Public Theater, NYU's Loewe Theater, Columbia University, and Manhattan School of Music. Internationally we collaborate with Teatri Oda, an independent company based in Prishtina, Kosova, and have toured together in Kosova, Macedonia and Albania. We received the 2008 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Production of a Play.

 

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos