2016 TBA Awards Celebration Announces Hosts, Entertainment

Theatre Bay Area has announced the hosts and evening entertainment for The 2016 TBA Awards Celebration on Monday, December 5 at A.C.T.'s Geary Theater. Tickets for the Awards Celebration are now on sale and range from $40-150.

Chinaka Hodge and Reggie D. White will host the Awards Celebration: a festive evening honoring artistic achievement in Bay Area theatre, directed by Rebecca Novick. The evening's entertainment will include select performances from Bay Area Children's Theatre, Berkeley Playhouse, Lamplighter Music Theatre, and San Francisco Mime Troupe. The evening will also include a special performance from Every 28 Hours: a collection of one act plays inspired by the #BlackLivesMatter movement produced in collaboration between Berkeley Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, and FaultLine Theater, Campo Santo, and Crowded Fire Theater, originally produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

"We are thrilled to offer a dynamic and diverse entertainment lineup for this year's Awards Celebration," says director Rebecca Novick. "This is a different type of Awards show--one that challenges, ignites, and encourages the community to celebrate all the ways that theatre makes the world a better place."

The evening's entertainment represents the expansive breadth of Bay Area theatre and includes selections from producers both large and small in operating scale, collaborations between local and national organizations, selections that are musical and non-musical, as well as work for young and adult audiences.

Executive Director Brad Erickson writers, "We firmly believe that storytelling is the vehicle through which we can build an inclusive democratic society. There is no better time than now to come together to support, to uplift, and to celebrate the important work of Bay Area theatremakers. We are proud to offer this platform and encourage the community at large to join us in celebration."

The 2016 TBA Awards Celebration, now in its third year, honors the excellence of professionally-oriented theatre by offering a peer-based adjudication process and awards celebration. Throughout the year, TBA Awards adjudicators attend eligible productions throughout the Bay Area, critique the work, and recommend productions to the community at large. This year, over 300 adjudicators cast ballots for over 281 productions at 96 companies across three tiers based on operating budget and use of Actors' Equity Association talent.

Tickets for the Awards Celebration are now on sale. Pricing ranges from $40-$150. Tickets may be purchased online at www.theatrebayarea.org/awardscelebration or through the A.C.T. box office at 415-749-2228.

ABOUT THE HOSTS:

Chinaka Hodge is a writer, educator, and performer born and raised in Oakland, California. Her work aims to make black women visible in productive ways. She is Associate Director for Programs and Pedagogy at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Visiting Editor at The California Sunday Magazine and a founder of The Life is Living festival series.

Reggie D. White has appeared across the Bay Area in Shakespeare, musicals, and new works. He has also performed Off-Broadway in For the Last Time, Troll, The Snow Queen, and I & You. In addition to his work as an actor, Reggie has also worked as a teaching artist with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Atlantic Theater Company, StageWrite, and many others. He is currently a TCG Fox Fellow with Berkeley Rep, has been awarded the Theatre Bay Area Titan Award and was the inaugural recipient of the RHE Fellowship.

Theatre Bay Area, now in its 40th year, is one of the largest and most respected regional performing arts service organizations in the nation. Its membership is drawn from 11 Bay Area counties and includes 300 theatre companies and some 2,100 individual artists. The Bay Area is home to one of the most dynamic theatre communities in the country; the region boasts more theatre companies per capita than any other metropolitan area in the United States, houses the third largest community of Equity (union) actors, and premieres some 200 new plays each year.

Theatre Bay Area's mission is to unite, strengthen, promote and advance the theatre community in the San Francisco Bay Area, working on behalf of our conviction that the performing arts are an essential public good, critical to a healthy and truly democratic society, and invaluable as a source of personal enrichment and growth.

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