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Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Molly Barnett / Elizabeth Wagner
rick@oandmco.com / molly@oandmco.com / elizabeth@oandmco.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE

New York, NY (7/27/10) –The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust has announced that the 3rd Annual ‘Mimi’ Awards will be presented at a ceremony to be held Monday, November 8, 2010 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater (150 West 65th Street). The honor comes with a cash prize of $200,000, making this by far the largest award ever created to honor and encourage artistic achievement in the American theater.

The very first ‘Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award’ went to Tony Kushner in 2008. Last year, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust presented David Adjmi, Tarell Alvin McCraney and Bruce Norris with the first ‘Steinberg Playwright Awards.’ The Advisory Committee and the Steinberg Trust honored Mr. Norris for his body of work and outstanding potential (for which he received a $50,000 cash award), and Messrs. Adjmi and McCraney for being promising new voices in the theater (for which they each received a cash award of $25,000). The playwrights were also presented with ‘The Mimi,’ a statue designed by Tony Award-nominated scenic designer and architect David Rockwell. The ‘Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award’ (for established playwrights) and the ‘Steinberg Playwright Awards’ (for playwrights in earlier stages of their careers), both known as ‘The Mimi,’ are presented in alternating years.

In 2008, The Board of Directors of The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust established an Advisory Committee of prominent theater professionals responsible for establishing the criteria for the Steinberg Playwright Awards, as well as the nomination and selection process. This year, the Advisory Committee welcomes three new members as part of a planned rotation: Susan Booth, Artistic Director of the Alliance Theatre; Todd London, Artistic Director of New Dramatists; and Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, Manhattan Theatre Club. These new members of the Advisory Committee join David Emmes, Producing Artistic Director, South Coast Repertory; Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director, The Public Theater; Polly Carl, Director of Artistic Development, Steppenwolf Theatre Company; and playwright Eduardo Machado, Artistic Director, INTAR Theatre.

The members of the Board of Directors of The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust are Carole A. Krumland, James D. Steinberg, Michael A. Steinberg, Seth M. Weingarten and William D. Zabel.

Advisory Committee_________________________________________

Susan V. Booth

Susan V. Booth joined the Alliance Theatre in 2001. In the past eight seasons, she has initiated the Collision Project for teens, the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition and has produced projects including The Color Purple; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; SISTER ACT the Musical; Bring in Da’ Noise, Bring in Da’ Funk; and last season’s Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL. As a director, she has directed nationally for Goodman, La Jolla Playhouse, New York Stage and Film, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Northlight Theatre, Victory Gardens, Court Theatre and many others. She holds degrees from Denison and Northwestern universities and was a fellow of the National Critics Institute and the Kemper Foundation. She has held teaching positions at Northwestern and DePaul University and serves as adjunct faculty with Emory University. She is the immediate past President of the Board of Directors for Theatre Communications Group (the national service organization for the field) and serves on the board of the Metro Atlanta Arts and Culture Coalition. Ms. Booth is married to Max Leventhal and is the proud mother of Moira Rose Leventhal.

Polly K. Carl, Ph.D.

Polly Carl is one of the nation’s foremost experts in the field of new play development. In September 2009, Dr. Carl joined the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a newly created position, Director of Artistic Development. As Director of Artistic Development, Dr. Carl oversees Steppenwolf’s new play development and leads the artistic initiatives facilitated through grants from the Duke and Mellon Foundations. For the last 11 years Dr. Carl has served as strategic and artistic head at the Playwrights’ Center – the last seven as Artistic Director. At the Playwrights’ Center, Dr. Carl programmed the prestigious Ruth Easton Lab, a year-round laboratory that supports the development of more than fifty new plays by emerging and advanced playwrights from around the country. Dr. Carl also served as the Lab’s lead dramaturge. Dr. Carl has been a tireless advocate for playwrights and new plays traveling around the world, including numerous trips to Japan to build an international exchange program with the Tokyo International Festival. Dr. Carl strongly believes that theater belongs on the stage and that living playwrights are the present and the future of the art form. Dr. Carl has sat on numerous boards, panels and committees including the Steinberg Advisory Committee to select their distinguished playwright award – the Mimi, the NEA Theater panel, the MAP Fund panel, and the board of Ten Thousand Things Theatre. Dr. Carl has a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society with an emphasis on Performance Theory from the University of Minnesota.

David Emmes

David Emmes is the Producing Artistic Director of South Coast Repertory, one of the country’s leading resident theaters and the recipient of many honors and awards, including the Tony® Award in recognition of its outstanding contributions to the American theatre. Renowned for its development of new plays, SCR’s Pacific Playwrights Festival has introduced over 275 new works to the American stage. Mr. Emmes has received numerous awards for his direction of SCR productions during his career, including the world premieres of Amy Freed’s Safe in Hell, The Beard of Avon, and Freedomland, Thomas Babe’s Great Day in the Morning, Keith Reddin’s Rum and Coke and But Not For Me, Neal Bell’s Cold Sweat, the American premieres of Terry Johnson’s Unsuitable for Adults and Joe Penhall’s Dumb Show, the West Coast premieres of Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings, David Hare’s The Secret Rapture and Richard Nelson’s New England, and the Southland premiere of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls at SCR and the Westwood Playhouse. Mr. Emmes received his BA and MA from San Francisco State University, and his PhD from USC. Along with his colleague, Martin Benson, Mr. Emmes is the recipient of the 2007-2008 Margo Jones Medal for lifetime commitment to the living theatre.

Oskar Eustis

Oskar Eustis is the Artistic Director of The Public Theater and has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the country. From 1981 through 1986 he was resident director and dramaturg at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco, and Artistic Director until 1989, when he moved to the L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum as Associate Artistic Director until 1994. Mr. Eustis then served as Artistic Director at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island for eleven years. In 2005 he took the helm at New York’s Public Theater. Throughout his career, Mr. Eustis has been dedicated to the development of new plays as both a director and a producer. He was a professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University, where he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for professional theater training. He received an honorary doctorate from Brown in 2001 and currently serves as Professor of Dramatic Writing and Arts and Public Policy at New York University.

Todd London

Todd London became the first recipient this past summer of Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) Visionary Leadership Award, for “an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theatre field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.” He is in his fourteenth season as artistic director of New Dramatists, the nation’s oldest center for the support and development of playwrights, where he has worked closely with more than a hundred of America’s finest playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. A former Managing Editor of American Theatre magazine and the author of The Artistic Home, published by the Theatre Communications Group (TCG), he has written, edited, and/or contributed to a dozen books. December, 2009 saw the publication of Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of The New American Play, the culmination of Theatre Development Fund’s four-year study of new play production in America, for which Mr. London served as project director and senior writer. Mr. London won the prestigious George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his essays in American Theatre and a Milestone Award for his first novel, The World’s Room, published by Steerforth Press. Under his leadership, New Dramatists received both a special Tony® Honor and the Ross Wetzsteon Award from the Village Voice Obies. Mr. London has taught at Harvard and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and currently serves on the faculty of Yale School of Drama.

Eduardo Machado

Eduardo Machado is the author of over forty plays including The Cook, Havana is Waiting, The Floating Island Plays, Once Removed, and Stevie Wants to Play the Blues. His plays have been produced at Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, Hartford Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf Theatre, Hampstead Theatre in London, American Place Theatre, The Cherry Lane Theatre, and Repertorio Español, among many others. Mr. Machado has served as an Artistic Associate at The Public, the Flea Theatre/Bat Theatre Company and The Cherry Lane Alternative, and he was playwright in residence at The Mark Taper Forum. He has received four National Endowment for the Arts grants, two Rockefeller Foundation Playwriting grants, and grants from The TCG Pew Charitable Trust and The Berrilla Kerr Foundation. Mr. Machado’s plays have been published by the Theatre Communications Group and Samuel French. He is currently INTAR Theatre’s Artistic Director, and began teaching at NYU in fall 2007. “Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger for Home,” a food memoir by Eduardo Machado and Michael Domitrovich, was recently released by Gotham Press.

Lynne Meadow

Lynne Meadow has been the Artistic Director of Manhattan Theatre Club since 1972, has overseen hundreds of productions and accepted every major theatre award on behalf of MTC, including 16 Tony Awards, 6 Pulitzer Prizes, 47 Obies and 29 Drama Desk Awards. Directing credits include Charles Busch's Our Leading Lady, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (Broadway, MTC, National tour), David Greig's The American Pilot, Ron Hutchinson's Moonlight and Magnolias (MTC, Alliance Theatre), Leslie Ayvazian's Nine Armenians (Drama Desk nomination, Best Director), Donald Margulies' The Loman Family Picnic, Alan Ayckbourn's Woman in Mind (Drama Desk nomination, Best Director), Absent Friends, A Small Family Business (Broadway), David Rudkin's Ashes (Obie Award), and premieres by Marsha Norman, Simon Gray, Howard Brenton, Lee Blessing, Sybille Pearson, etc. Graduate of Yale School of Drama, Bryn Mawr College. Recipient of numerous awards including the Margo Jones Award, the Mr. Abbott Award, etc. Taught at Yale, Fordham, NYU, Circle in the Square School, etc.

The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust_____________________

The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust was created by Harold Steinberg in 1986 in the names of himself and his late wife Miriam. The Trust's primary mission is to support and promote the American theater as a vital part of our culture by nurturing American playwrights, encouraging the development and production of new American plays, and providing significant support to theater companies across the country.

Since its inception, the Trust has given in excess of $45 million to more than one hundred not-for-profit theater organizations. These gifts have funded countless productions, as well as the commissioning of playwrights, playwriting programs and arts-in-education outreach programs for tens of thousands of children in an effort to create and educate new generations of theatergoers.

The Trust has also been instrumental in providing emergency assistance to numerous theater companies that have faced severe financial circumstances (including possible dissolution) because of cutbacks in traditional sources of funding or other factors, including the devastating impact of the events of September 11, 2001 on cultural institutions in New York City.

The Trust has also collaborated with the American Theatre Critics Association to create and fund the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. The award is presented annually during the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Recent winners of this award include Craig Lucas, Lynn Nottage, Lee Blessing and Nilo Cruz.

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