Take Wing And Soar Productions is proud to announce its Founder and Producing Artistic Director Debra Ann Byrd, has been named the recipient of the Lucille Lortel Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women. Ms. Byrd will receive the honor, which will be presented to her by award-winning Broadway and film actress, Jane White, at an awards celebration scheduled for Monday, December 7, 2009 at The National Arts Club.
The
Lucille Lortel Award, established with an endowment given by
Lucille Lortel, carries a monetary award presented to an aspiring woman in any discipline of theatre who shows great creative promise and deserves recognition and encouragement for her efforts. The work of Take Wing And Soar Productions, and its Founder and Producing Artistic Director Debra Ann Byrd, captured the attention of the
Lucille Lortel Committee of the League.
Debra Ann Byrd is the Founder of Take Wing And Soar Productions, Inc., where she currently serves as Chief Executive and Producing Artistic Director. She has guided this company's growth from its birth as the passionate dream of one determined woman, into a viable support organization serving classical artists of color and theatre arts groups throughout New York. Ms. Byrd has been working in theatre for 20 years, during which she has acted in, and produced, dozens of shows, ranging from classical to contemporary, original to experimental.
As an actor, producer, arts manager and business leader, she has received more than 20 awards and citations, and was recently selected for inclusion in the 2009 Editions of Who's Who in the World and Who's Who of American Women, and is the 2006
Josephine Abady Award recipient for "Excellence in Producing Works that Foster Diversity." This award-winning theatre arts professional received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Acting from Marymount Manhattan College, and additional advanced studies from The Public Theater's Shakespeare Lab Program. Ms. Byrd recently completed producer training at the Commercial Theatre Institute, a special project of The Broadway League and the
Theatre Development Fund. She received additional training from the Arts Leadership Institute, a unique Leadership Training Program for Arts Managers at Teacher's College/Columbia University. Ms. Byrd is currently on the Producing Team at The National Black
Theatre, Inc. and an Associate Producer for 6-10 Productions, Inc.
Jane White made her Broadway debut in Lill
Ian Smith's Strange Fruit with José Ferrer and pursued an acting career with stints in summer stock, on Broadway and Off, and acting instruction under various teachers, including
Uta Hagen. Her broad recognition in the
Theatre World ultimately came with the highly successful off-Broadway to Broadway run of Once Upon A Mattress, the musical comedy that served as a launching vehicle for
Carol Burnett. Her role as the domineering queen showcased White's commanding stage presence, leading to portrayals of similarly powerful women in Shakespearean and classical pieces throughout the 1960s and into the 1990s. She won the 1965-66 Obie Award for her performances in the New York Shakespeare Festival as the Princess of France in Love's Labor's Lost and Volumnia in Coriolanus, and the 1988-89 Los Angeles Critics Circle Award for the Mother in Lorca's Blood Wedding. From the 1970s to the 2000s, she filled roles of imposing, strong-willed women in productions including A Little Night Music, Follies, Ghosts, Pygmalion and Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. The Metropolitan Opera presented her, in the 1983-84 and 1993-94 seasons, in spoken roles in Les Troyens and La Fille du Regiment. She also worked in television, memorably as a villain on daytime's Search for Tomorrow, and in film, playing the role of a Park Avenue Madam in Klute and the Schoolteacher in Beloved. She has been honored by the NAACP for her range of work, and has counted among her fans such notables as
Bobby Short, playwright
Moss Hart, maestro
James Levine and theatre impresario/actor
Jean-Louis Barrault.
Past recipients of the
Lucille Lortel Award include Liz Jones, Co-Executive Director, Page 73 Productions, Inc. (2008); Jean Wagner, Artistic Director, Voice & Vision (2008
Lucille Lortel Women's Visionary Award);
Melissa Silverman, Executive Director, 3Graces Theater Co. (2007); Justine Lambert, Artistic Director, Looking Glass Theatre; Mandy Hackett, Founder,
The Underwood Theater;
Cara Reichel, Founder,
Prospect Theatre Company; and Melanie Joseph, Founder,
Foundry Theatre.
Take Wing And Soar Productions, Inc., founded in 1999 by classically trained actress Debra Ann Byrd, is a women-led New York State, 501(c) 3 Professional Theatre Arts Corporation, dedicated to supporting women, youth and classically trained actors of color. Take Wing And Soar Productions exists primarily to help classical actors of color realize their full potential. In its brief history, Take Wing And Soar Productions has enjoyed many successes including, the creation of The TWAS Theatre Project, The TWAS Classical Lab Reading Series and The Take Wing And Soar Spirit of Excellence Awards. Past TWAS Spirit of Excellence Pioneer Award recipients have included veteran classical actors
Jane White,
Ruby Dee,
Earle Hyman and
James Earl Jones. TWAS Inc. projects and programs have served over 300 classically trained artists, directors, designers, technicians and young entrepreneurial artists, have been seen by over 9,000 patrons; and was recently nominated for 14 AUDELCO Recognition Awards for Excellence for its mainstage productions of Richard III, The Darker Face Of The Earth, Hamlet, Medea and King Lear. Thanks to the generosity and support of Dr.
Barbara Ann Teer, TWAS Inc. has been a professional theatre company in residence at the National Black Theatre for the past six years. Take Wing And Soar Productions is a Member Organization of the Alliance of New York State Arts Organizations, Alliance of Resident Theatres New York, the Harlem Arts Alliance and the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce. For more information about TWAS Inc., visit us online at www.takewingandsoar.org
The League of Professional Theatre Women is a not-for-profit advocacy organization promoting visibility and increasing opportunities for women in the professional theatre. The League provides a number of programs and services for its members as well as the theatre community. The League links professional theatre women nationally and internationally, providing an ongoing forum for ideas and issues of concern to the theatrical community and its audiences. The League is also a member of the New York Women's Agenda and the New York Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts and Media.
Lucille Lortel (December 16, 1900 - April 4, 1999) was an American actress and theatre producer who is remembered as the namesake of an Off-Broadway playhouse and theatrical award. Born Lucille Wadler in New York City,
Lucille Lortel was originally an actress during the 1920s (she once recollected comparing breast sizes with
Helen Hayes). She went on to become an Off-Broadway theatre producer and impresario with the help of a wealthy husband, industrialist
Louis Schweitzer, whom she married in 1931. Her age was a well-kept mystery until nearly the end of her life. Lortel founded The White Barn Theatre at her estate in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1947. The
Lucille Lortel Theatre, on Christopher Street, in Greenwich Village, New York City, which hosts the
Lucille Lortel Awards for achievement in Off-Broadway productions, and the Lortel Archives, which provides the Internet Off-Broadway Database, are named in her honor and are supported by her foundation. She died of natural causes in New York, at the age of 98, and is interred at the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
Monday, December 7th, 2009 | 6:00PM - 9:00PM
LPTW Annual Holiday Party and Awards Celebration
THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB
15 Gramercy Park South | New York, NY
$35 by November 15th | After November 15th -- $45
Add $5 for Non-LPTW Guests
RESERVATIONS: By check: League of Professional Theatre Women to:
LPTW, Post Office Box 2292, New York, NY 10108
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