Garry Hynes and Martha Clarke Take Home SDC's Joe A. Callaway Awards

Directors Garry Hynes and Martha Clarke were the 2009 recipients of the Joe A. Callaway Award, honoring excellence in direction and choreography in non-Broadway productions in New York. Hynes won for his production of THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN and Clarke for choreography of GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS.  The honors were bestowed earlier this month.

The Joe A. Callaway Awards are administered by Actors' Equity Association. They were established in 1989 to honor a male and a female actor for the best performance in a classical play in the New York metropolitan area, selected by a panel of critics. The award is given in January and includes $1000 and a commemorative plaque. The award was presented at the annual Society of Directors and Choreographers Gala, held on November 8th.

MacArthur Award winner Martha Clarke's career spans dance, theater, and opera. She was a founding member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre and has choreographed for the Nederlans Dans Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, and The Martha Graham Company, among others. As a director, Clarke's many original productions include Garden of Earthly Delights, Vienna: Lusthaus, Miracolo d'amore, Endangered Species, An Uncertain Hour, The Hunger Artist, and Vers la flame. She directed the premiere of Christopher Hampton's Alice's Adventures Underground at the Royal National Theatre in London. Clarke has directed The Magic Flute for the Glimmerglass Opera and the Canadian Opera Company; Cosi fan tutte for Glimmerglass; Tan Dun's Marco Polo for the Munich Biennale, the Hong-Kong Festival and the New York City Opera; and Gluck's Orfeo and Euridice for the English National Opera and the New York City Opera. She directed A Midsummer Night's Dream for The American Repertory Theatre and created Belle Epoque, a work based on the life of Toulouse Lautrec, for Lincoln Center Theater. Clarke has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation as well as the National Endowment for the Arts. She has received the Drama Desk Award, two Obie Awards, and the L.A. Critics Award. Her Kaos, presented at New York Theatre Workshop, was awarded the first Tony Randall Foundation Award in 2006.

Garry Hynes returned to Atlantic for The Cripple of Inishmaan, where she directed The Beauty Queen of Leenane, prior to its Broadway transfer. In 1998, she earned the distinction of becoming the first woman to receive a Tony Award® for direction. She is the recipient of a 2002The Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Award for Best Director, and a 2005 Special Tribute Award for her contribution to Irish Theatre.