Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher Wins 2013 Ivey Lifetime Achievement Award

The Twin Cities theater community bestowed on Jeffrey Hatcher, nationally-renowned playwright, the Lifetime Achievement Award, and performer, director and playwright Ricardo Vásquez the Emerging Artist Award at the 9th annual Ivey Awards. The celebration, held Monday, September 23, at the Historic State Theatre in downtown Minneapolis, honors and showcases the work of professional theater companies and artists over the past year.

Based on evaluations completed by the more than 150 volunteer theater evaluators who saw more than 1,000 performances created by 80 professional theaters in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area from September 2012 through August 2013, two productions and ten individuals/ensembles were also recognized with 2013 Iveys:

Productions

In the Next Room, Jungle Theater: Overall Excellence

Milly & Tillie, Open Eye Figure Theatre: Overall Excellence

Individual Recognition

Peter Beard & James Napoleon Stone, Directing, Hamlet (Theatre Coup d'Etat)

Raymond Berg, Musical Direction, Urinetown: The Musical (Jungle Theater)

Peter Brosius, Directing, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Children's Theatre Company)

Michael Croswell, Sound Design, Misterman (Frank Theatre)

Ensemble, Acting, Clybourne Park (Guthrie Theater)

Ensemble, Acting, Two Sugars, Room for Cream (Hennepin Theatre Trust)

Michael Matthew Ferrell, Choreography, Singin' in the Rain (Bloomington Civic Theatre)

Katherine Glover, Alissa M. Shellito & Jeri Weiss, Playwriting, Freshwater Theatre Goes Back to High School (Freshwater Theatre Company)

Dean Holt, Acting, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Children's Theatre Company)

Craig Johnson, Acting, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (Walking Shadow Theatre Company)

Jeffrey Hatcher (Lifetime Achievement Award) is an acclaimed playwright and screenwriter. His many award-winning original plays have been seen on Broadway, off-Broadway, as well as every regional theater in America. From Miss Nelson is Missing in 1996 to recently, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club, he has published more than 25 plays, including Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which was recognized with an Ivey Award last year. Locally, the Illusion Theater has commissioned and/or staged 12 Hatcher plays, and he has written or adapted several scripts for the Guthrie Theater. Hatcher's works have appeared on many other Twin Cities stages, including Park Square Theatre, the Children's Theatre and the History Theatre. Hatcher's screenwriting credits include Casanova with Heath Ledger and The Duchess with Keira Knightly. He also wrote several episodes for Columbo, the popular Peter Falk detective show that aired in the 1970s and 1980s. His accomplishments include winning several awards and fellowships from the NEA, the Lila Wallace Fund, the Rosenthal New Play Prize, the Frankel Award, Barrymore Award and others. He is a four-time participant at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, and is a member of Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America. In addition, he is a Playwrights' Center Core Alumnus and a New Dramatists Alumnus.

RICARDO VÁZQUEZ (Emerging Artist Award) is an actor and writer. A graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program, he has appeared on stage at Mixed Blood Theatre, Park Square Theatre and with Ten Thousand Things and Pangea World Theatre/Teatro del Pueblo. Outside of Minnesota, he's been part of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and Hudson Valley Shakespeare among others. Vázquez has also appeared in many local commercials and Seasons 1 & 2 of M@d About TV! As a writer, he's scripted for the Minneapolis One-Minute Play Festival and the University of Minnesota New Works Series, and his byline has appeared online at MinnesotaPlayList.com. In 2007, he received the C. Lance Brockman Performance Award, and recently he received a Many Voices Fellowship from the Playwrights' Center.

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