Member Awards

Patricia Milton's play, "Enemies: Foreign and Domestic," which premiered at Central Works Theatre February 2015, has been awarded "Outstanding World Premiere Play" in the 2015 Theatre Bay Area Awards.

"Enemies: Foreign and Domestic" is a darkly comic four-woman play that examines the US' irrational fear of Muslim refugees, and what we have to fear from our own at home. You can read the play on the New Play Exchange website.

The Theatre Bay Area (TBA) Awards is a peer-reviewed awards program made up of theater professionals from among 300 local theater companies who adjudicate productions throughout seven San Francisco Bay Area counties. More about the program here.

Semi-finalist: awarded for THE MARBLE MUSE, a historical drama about one of America's pioneering sculptors, Louisa Lander, and her doomed relationship with author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Honorable Mention: awarded for THE MARBLE MUSE, a historical drama about one of America's pioneering sculptors, Louisa Lander, and her doomed relationship with author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

2015 Finalists for the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award:

It is Solved by Walking

Creator: Catherine Banks (playwright)

Nominator: Reina Green.

In this play, published in 2012 by Playwrights Canada Press, middle-aged Margaret reflects on her sexual desire and the suppression of her creativity through the metaphor of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” The play turns the usual understanding of “poetic muse” on its head as muse Wallace Stevens, with his bullying, confrontational ways, both inspires Margaret and paralyzes her artistic drive—even as he forces her to recognize emotions she had previously suppressed. Readings of the play have been held as far away as Catalonia, where the text was translated into Catalan. It was staged in Halifax by White Rooster Theatre and HomeFirst Productions in 2014.

Jury Comments: A fascinating, affecting exploration of the relationship between sexuality and creativity, elegantly constructed.

Creator Catherine Banks lives in Nova Scotia.

On October 25th 2015, Shirley was honoured to receive the Playwrights Guild of Canada's Lifetime Membership Award at the annual Tom Hendry Awards, hosted this year by Kawa Ada and held at the historic Arts & Letters Club in Toronto.

Monica Raymond received a full Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center and will be in residence there from mid November till mid December 2015.

The Swan Fellowship is for writers who are also visual artists, or for visual artists who are also writers.

Our original musical satire, YOU WANNA HEAR LUCK? won the 2014 IMEA (International Music & Entertainment Association) Award for Outstanding Original Book of a Musical, and its 2014 Nomination for its Outstanding Original Score of a Musical.

off the WALL received the following email message today:

We here at the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize would like to invite your theatre to become one of our “Source Theatres.” As a source Theatre, you will be asked to submit an outstanding new play written by a woman to be considered for the Prize.  Your commitment to new plays and plays by women has distinguished you in the field, and we would be honored if you would join our family.

We are honored and proud!