Danya Taymor and Travis Wall to be Honored With 2020 Joe A. Callaway Awards

Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation has announced that the 2020 Joe A. Callaway Awards will be awarded to Danya Taymor for excellence in directing for Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Playwrights Horizons) and Travis Wall for excellence in choreography for The Wrong Man (MCC Theater). The Callaway Awards, along with the previously announced Gordon Davidson Award and Zelda Fichandler Award, will be presented virtually on February 8, 2021 at 8pm EST.

The Callaway Awards are peer-given awards recognizing excellence in the arts of stage direction and choreography in a given New York City Off-Broadway season. Callaway finalists are Knud Adams for excellence in directing for The Headlands (Lincoln Center Theater) and Les Waters for excellence in directing for The Thin Place at (Playwrights Horizons). The Callaway Award was first presented in 1989.

The 2019-2020 Callaway Committee was chaired by Pamela Berlin and included Shelley Butler, Nelson Eusebio, Richard Hamburger, Devanand Janki, Darren Lee, Mary Robinson, Amy Saltz, Michele Shay, Maria Torres, and Christopher Windom.

Committee Chair Pamela Berlin said in a statement, "The Callaway Awards are unique in being the only awards granted to directors and choreographers by a committee of their director and choreographer peers. We on the Callaway Committee this year were excited and inspired by the dynamic and original work of all of the recipients: Danya Taymor, Les Waters and Knud Adams for their direction and Travis Wall for his choreography".

The SDCF Awards will take place virtually on Monday February 8, 2021 at 8pm EST and will celebrate the recipients of and finalists for the Callaway Awards. The ceremony will also honor Kamilah Forbes, recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award; Carol Dunne, Pirronne Yousefzadeh, and Seema Sueko, finalists for the Zelda Fichandler Award; and Seret Scott, recipient of the Gordon Davidson Award. The SDCF Awards ceremony is free and open to the public. More information about all the winners and finalists can be found on the SDCF website and tickets for the event can found through Eventbrite.

Danya Taymor is an Obie-Award winning New York-based director, writer and translator. Recent direction includes Will Arbery's Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Lortel Outstanding Play), Korde Arrington Tuttle's Graveyard Shift (Goodman Theatre), Jeremy O. Harris' Daddy (Almeida London + New Group/Vineyard), Antoinette Nwandu's Pass Over (Lincoln Center + Steppenwolf, Lortel Outstanding Play), Danai Gurira's Familiar (Steppenwolf), Martyna Majok's Queens (Lincoln Center Theater), Justin Kuritzkes' The Sensuality Party (The New Group), Susan Soon-He Stanton's Cygnus (Women's Project), Brian Watkins' Wyoming (Lesser America) and My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer (The Flea), and Sarah Gancher's The Place We Built (The Flea). Translations include Alejandro Ricaño's We Are Getting Better at Saying Goodbye, Luis Enrique Guitierrez Ortiz Monasterio's I Hate f-ing Mexicans, and Ettore Scola's Working on a Special Day.

Her production of Antoinette Nwandu's Pass Over was filmed in collaboration with Spike Lee and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Other awards and fellowships include the Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity from Lincoln Center, Time Warner Directing Fellowship at Women's Project, 2050 Fellowship at New York Theatre Workshop, Van Lier Directing Fellowship; Gates Foundation Grant, Rough Draft Residency at the Drama League and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab.

Travis Wall is the recipient of 10 consecutive Emmy nominations, which include two Emmy wins, for his work on Fox's So You Think You Can Dance. Wall was also the runner-up in the show's 2nd Season. Additional television work includes Dancing with the Stars, The Academy Awards, The MTV VMAs, The American Music Awards, and Pretty Little Liars. Wall also produced and starred in Oxygen's docu-reality series All the Right Moves profiling his dance company Shaping Sound. Travis has collaborated with artists including Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Lopez, Sara Bareilles, Adele, Demi Lovato, Maddie Ziegler, and Florence Welsh. His work in film can be seen in Step Up: Revolution, The Wedding Ringer, and Hulu's The Binge. Travis made his Broadway performance debut in the 2001 revival of The Music Man. His New York work includes the Off-Broadway production of BARE: A Rock Musical and The Wrong Man at MCC.