Vineyard Theatre Reveals Winners of the Emerging Artists Awards

Vineyard Theatre has revealed the recipients of the 2024-2025 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and Colman Domingo Award. Both awards will be presented at The Vineyard’s annual Emerging Artists Celebration on Monday, December 9, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 PM at the National Arts Club (15 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003). This year’s honorees are Jake Brasch, recipient of the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, and Kameron Neal, recipient of the Colman Domingo Award.

The event will also celebrate Josiah Davis, the current recipient of The Vineyard's biennial Susan Stroman Directing Award, awarded last fall.

The Vineyard Theatre Council will host this intimate evening to celebrate the Vineyard’s artistic community and support early career artists. Guests will enjoy food and drink, and have the opportunity to engage in conversation with Vineyard artists and friends, including Paula Vogel, who will be in attendance. The event is generously sponsored by Armanino and Morgan Stanley. 

The Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and Colman Domingo Award are presented annually by Vineyard Theatre, with the Susan Stroman Directing Award given biennially.

Paula Vogel PLAYWRITING AWARD

Paula Vogel's long and cherished relationship with The Vineyard began with the theatre's acclaimed production of How I Learned To Drive, directed by Mark Brokaw, in 1997; the play won the Pulitzer Prize, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk awards for Best Play; premiered on Broadway in 2022 and received two Tony nominations including Best Revival of a Play. Her most recent production at The Vineyard, Indecent, moved to Broadway in 2017, marking Vogel’s Broadway debut and winning two Tony Awards. Ms. Vogel's play The Long Christmas Ride Home, also directed by Mark Brokaw, premiered at The Vineyard in 2001. 
 
The Vineyard's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award is given annually to an exceptionally promising early career writer. The award includes a cash prize, a yearlong residency to develop new work, as well as writing space, readings, workshops, and ongoing dramaturgical support. 
 
Previous recipients of the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award are Tarell Alvin McCraney (2008), Rajiv Joseph (2009), Kara Lee Corthron (2010), Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (2011), Erika Sheffer (2012), Christopher Chen (2013), Clare Barron (2014), Boo Killebrew (2015), Kate Tarker (2016), Antoinette Nwandu (2017), Jeremy O. Harris (2018), Charly Evon Simpson (2019), John Caswell Jr. (2020), Ryan J. Haddad (2021), T. Adamson (2022) and Mara Nelson-Greenberg (2024).
 
The Vineyard's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award is made possible through the generosity of The Tournesol Project.
 
Jake Brasch (he/they) is a writer + actor + composer + clown and a recent graduate of the playwriting program at The Juilliard School. The World Premiere of their play The Reservoir will be presented in 2025 as a co-production between the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Alliance Theatre, and Geffen Playhouse. Jake won the Kennedy Center's 2024 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and is the inaugural recipient of the 2024 Terrence McNally Recovery Commission. They’re a member of the 2024 Page 73 Writers Group, a 2023-2024 Alliance/Kendeda Finalist, and a recent graduate of Youngblood at The Ensemble Studio Theatre. Jake has commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, The Acting Company, and the EST/Sloan Project. With playwright Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, he is a Co-Founder of American Sing-Song, a collective that writes and performs filthy hour-long musicals. He recently retired from his career as a birthday party clown and is developing a series based on his exploits. Jake has three brothers, 14 pairs of glasses, and lives in Brooklyn with Marvin (his sourdough starter) as well as his brilliant husband Tyler Brasch. BFA: NYU Tisch. jakebrasch.com
 

Colman Domingo AWARD

Colman Domingo’s collaborations with The Vineyard include A Boy and His Soul, Scottsboro Boys, and Dot. Those productions spanned Domingo’s work as an actor, singer, and playwright. Seeded in 2019 from that longtime collaboration, the Colman Domingo Award is bestowed annually to a multi-faceted Black male or male-identifying theatre artist to provide support and resources to create new work. Recipients are selected directly by The Vineyard and Mr. Domingo and receive a cash stipend, workshops and other developmental opportunities, access to writing and studio space, mentorship, and the ongoing support of The Vineyard. 
 
Previous recipients include York Walker, Reggie D. White and Rudi Goblen.
 
The 2024-25 Colman Domingo Award is made possible through the generosity of Josef and Mary Ann Allen.
 
Kameron Neal is an artist and designer working across video, installation, and performance. As a Public Artist in Residence with New York City’s Department of Records he created Down the Barrel (of a Lens), an archival film installation interrogating NYPD surveillance. As a projection designer, Kameron has worked on numerous productions including Ryan J. Haddad’s Dark Disabled Stories at The Public Theater, for which he received Lucille Lortel and Henry Hewes Design Awards. He is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award, an Opera America Award for his collaborations with composer Paul Pinto, and a prizewinner in the National Portrait Gallery’s 2025 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. He also co-created MukhAgni with Shayok Misha Chowdhury, an irreverent multimedia performance memoir about death that was presented at Under the Radar. Artist residencies include MacDowell, Yaddo, CultureHub, ALL ARTS, MAXmachina, Ars Nova's Makers Lab, and The Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group. Kameron’s work has been seen in The New York Times, Forbes, HYPEBEAST and presented at a variety of institutions including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, Museum of the City of New York, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Williams College Museum of Art, and Sound Scene at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum. Kameron is a 2024-25 Movement Lab Fellow at the Rhode Island School of Design in their Film/Animation/Video Department.
 

Susan Stroman DIRECTING AWARD

Susan Stroman began her professional career as a  NY choreographer with the Vineyard's revival of Kander and Ebb's Flora, The Red Menace in 1988.  This began a long and fruitful relationship with the Vineyard,  continuing with her remarkable work on Kander, Ebb, and Thompson's The Scottsboro Boys as director and choreographer, for which she received Lucille Lortel and Astaire awards, and later Tony nominations for the celebrated transfer of the production to Broadway in 2010. Ms. Stroman continued her amazing journey with the Vineyard, directing Colman Domingo's Dot, her first non-musical play, to great critical acclaim. Then in 2018 she co-conceived, directed and choreographed the Vineyard's unique "dance play" The Beast in the Jungle, collaborating again with John Kander and David Thompson, for which she received the SDC Calloway Award for outstanding choreography.
 
The Vineyard established the Susan Stroman Directing Award and residency in 2013, giving it biennially to a talented early or mid-career director to develop new work while in residence. The award provides recipients with space, time, and support to develop projects and strike new collaborations, while creating opportunities for them to become part of the life of the company in an ongoing way.
 
Previous recipients of the Vineyard’s Susan Stroman Directing Award include Josiah Davis, Tyler Thomas, Whitney White, Lee Sunday Evans, and Liesl Tommy.
 

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