Emily Mann to Lead National Artist Advisory Committee

The Hermitage Artist Retreat is pleased to announce that multi-award-winning Director and Playwright Emily Mann will head its National Artist Advisory Committee, replacing Brooklyn Academy of Music Executive Producer Joseph V. Melillo, who has held the position since its inception in 2005. The group is responsible for recommending mid-career artists who are invited to receive six-week residencies at the Hermitage Artist Retreat on Manasota Key in Englewood, FL. The prestigious committee includes some of America's finest directors, curators, and artists. Serving with Ms. Mann are Dr. Tony Bannon, Director Burchfield-Penny Arts Center; Dan Cameron, former Chief Curator, Orange County Museum of Art; Michael Bigelow Dixon, Assistant Professor of Theater, Transylvania University; Kenneth Fischer, President, University Musical Society; Linda S. Golding, Founder/Director, The Reservoir; Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, Executive Director, Arizona State University Gammage; Christopher Merrill, Director, International Writing program, University of Iowa; Josip Novakovich, author; Christopher Offutt, Novelist; Carey Perloff, Artistic Director, American Conservatory Theatre; Barbara Shepherd, Director of National Partnerships -Education, The Kennedy Center; and Franklin Sirmans, Department Head and Curator of Contemporary Art, Los Angles County Museum of Art.

"We are very pleased that Emily Mann has agreed to lead our National Artist Advisory Committee," remarked Hermitage Executive Director Bruce E. Rodgers. "When mid-career artists see who has requested that their name be submitted for a Hermitage residency, it means something because this committee is comprised of some of the best people working in the arts today. Our success as an organization is due in part to the people who select our renowned artists. It's reflected in the work that is done here, it's reflected in the response to our community programs and it's reflected in the support we are so fortunate to receive from the community. Having someone as renowned as Emily Mann leading the team will allow us to continue the level of excellence established when Joe Melillo came on board at the very beginning."

Emily Mann is in her 25th season as Artistic Director and Resident Playwright of McCarter Theatre where she has overseen 200 productions, received a Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater and celebrated the Best Play Tony Award win for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang - a play commissioned, developed and premiered at McCarter.

As a playwright, Ms. Mann wrote and directed Having Our Say, adapted from the book by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth premiering at McCarter before it moved to Broadway. The play received the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, Tony nominations for Best Play, Best Direction of a Play, and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play along with Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations; NAACP and Joseph Jefferson Awards, as well as Peabody and Christopher Awards for Mann's screenplay.

A Sarasota connection is Mann's McCarter directing of Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropic, which she also directed on Broadway.

Emily Mann was also on the 2014 Greenfield Prize jury that selected Cruz as the winner in Drama. In addition to other numerous awards, and nominations for directing and playwriting, Emily Mann is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on its council. She is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Princeton University, was named the 2011 Person of the Year from the National Theatre Conference, and is this year's recipient of The Margo Jones Award.

"The accolades just go on and on and on," continued Rodgers. "Joe Melillo and his team gave the Hermitage a wonderful beginning. Emily will continue that level of excellence as we bring more artists to our inspiring campus to make their art."

For more information on the Hermitage Artist Retreat, visit www.HermitageArtistRetreat.org.