Theatre Editor Randy Gener Receives NYC Legend Award for Outstanding Leadership

Exactly two years after surviving a racially biased and anti-gay hate attack after seeing a Broadway show, Randy Gener earned New York's Nubian Union Legend Award given for leadership at a "Chasing Stars" Gala in Greenwich Village in New York City.

The award was presented to Gener and other honorees for "outstanding leadership and meritorious community service." Recipients of this unique award "exemplify unconditional sacrifice and service to the communities that they serve, and they stand as icons of stewardship to everyone," stated Clark Everson, President of Unity Missionary Investors.

A former Village Voice staff writer/arts critic and until recently the senior editor of American Theatre magazine (published by TCG or Theatre Communications Group), Randy Gener is the most decorated arts and culture editor of his generation. He is now proprietor of In the Culture of One World (cultureofoneworld.org), a live event and media project.

The "Chasing Stars" Gala featured a host of clergy, celebrities and community leaders. Other honorees were Dr. William Gibbs of Kings County Hospital; China Flowers, fashion specialist; Richard Alston, renowned concert pianist; and Nadege Dady, Dean of Student Affairs at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine Harlem.

During gala, Gener recounted his personal experience of being the unsuspecting target of a deadly assaulted in a bias-related hate crime and knockout game in the Broadway district. It happened soon after he attended the Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Sophie Treadwell's MACHINAL starring Rebecca Hall.

In 2010, Gener received a Philippine Presidential Award, which designat ed him as a "Living Legacy of the Filipino Nation (Pamana ng Pilipinas)." President Benigno Aquino III conferred the award on Gener at the Malacanang Presidential Palace. He was the first to be honored solely for an American theater career.

"After reading about his story, Randy was one of our first picks," Everson said. "He is deserving of our Legend Award."

The Nubian Union is made up of two African-American advocacy organizations focused on the alarming increase of brain injuries among young black men: Unity Missionary Investors, which aids economically-challenged communities; and Nubian Cultural Center for Research & Development, a multigenerational program that promotes racial and ethnic harmony through education.

On January 18, 2014, Gener was targeted and bloodily assaulted because of his identity as an Asian American and an openly gay man. News of the violent attack landed in all major media in the U.S. and around the world. Media coverage included the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Huffington Post, New York Daily News, CBS, ABC and NBC, especially in France, Sweden, Asia, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe, where Gener has worked.

The NY County District Attorney's Office named the criminals as Leighton Jennings of 166th Street in Jamaica, Queens, and a female accomplice who served as a decoy in order to first provoke the bloody attack. Police arrested Jennings. NY's District Attorney Office and NY's Hate Crimes Unit both slapped Jennings with hate crime and felony assault charges.

Gener is TCG's only American Theatre magazine staff editor -- and the first and only American of Asian descent -- to earn the legendary George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Judges for the Nathan Award are the English and theater departments of Yale, Princeton and Cornell Universities. Given annually since 1958, the Nathan Award is considered the Academy Award of U.S. theater criticism.

In 2013, the year before he was attacked, Gener played a major instrumental role in a nationwide social-media effort and petition campaign, signed by 2,700 people on change.org. The adventurous Cuban-born playwright and director María Irene Fornés, 82, who has Alzheimer's disease, had been left abandoned in upstate New York. The campaign successfully transferred Fornés to Amsterdam House nursing home, where she has gained better spirits.

The hate-crime attack directly impacted his efforts to improve his lot in life. "When Jennings bludgeoned my skull, I was selected as Literature Laureate and Global Artist-in-Residence of the Incheon Art Platform in South Korea," said Gener. "I had done three years of work as a curator for the U.S. National Stage Design Exhibition in Prague. Jennings and his partner-in-crime traumatized my family and destroyed my life savings."