Red Pill Players Receives Jamie Hawkins-Gaar Memorial Scholarship For Diverse Improv Troupes
By: Julie Musbach Jul. 18, 2019
Red Pill Players, a rising African American improv group in Atlanta, was announced as the second recipient of The Jamie Hawkins-Gaar Memorial Scholarship at Dad's Garage Theatre. The scholarship, dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion within Atlanta's improv community, honors the life and legacy Jamie Hawkins-Gaar, who was an improviser and friend of Dad's Garage.
Red Pill Players will receive a year of coaching, for free, from Dad's Garage ensemble members to hone their craft. The troupe is comprised of Corean Canty, Leslie Johnson, Yoshee Sodiq, William Hayes, Tiffany Burke Anderson, Isaac Horton, and Octavian Whittaker. They have performed at theatres in Atlanta, Miami, San Diego, Nashville, New York, Austin, Minneapolis, and Toronto.
"We are extremely excited and grateful to be receiving this scholarship. Our team formed partly out of not having access to a stage and wanting to continue to learn and grow together. We have always had a goal of bringing more awareness and diversity to improv and comedy as a whole. We were lucky enough to have Mark Kendall as a coach early on and have all had the opportunity to take classes, perform and be engaged with the Dad's garage community. It is the place we have felt most welcomed, accepted and have had the most opportunity to grow. We are excited to continue our journey and know this will elevate us to the next level as a team," says Red Pill Players.
This was the second year of the Jamie Hawkins-Gaar Memorial Scholarship. Hawkins-Gaar passed away from a rare and undiagnosed heart condition on February 4, 2017, while running a half-marathon in St. Petersburg, Florida. A good friend of the Dad's Garage family, he was a vivacious creative professional who developed and directed a considerable library of popular online sketches, which garnered hundreds of thousands of views, and wrote several film scripts. Hawkins-Gaar also worked on award-winning Dad's Garage TV videos, including "Movers" which he directed.
Improv comedy was very much central to Hawkins-Gaar's creative passions, and Dad's Garage is proud to collaborate with his wife, Katie Hawkins-Gaar, to offer a scholarship program that continues his legacy of creating awesome work. The scholarship is funded for four consecutive years, with new teams receiving a year of coaching each time. The first recipients of the award were Other Side of the Wall, a bilingual Spanish-English improv team. The goal of the program is to build a more diverse improv scene in Atlanta, reflective of the range of voices and perspectives that make Atlanta so great.
Founded in 1995, Dad's Garage Theatre Company has grown from a small volunteer led organization to a thriving mid-size theatre led by professional artistic and administrative staff that includes over 300 volunteers and performers. We now entertain more than 33,000 people each year in Atlanta, at public events across the state, and at improv festivals across the continent. In addition to outrageous original productions, Dad's Garage produces improv shows year-round, educates young improvisers in a high school outreach program, and facilitates classes and workshops for the general public.
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