Fellowships & Awards
TYA/USA cultivates, develops, and recognizes excellence in the field of TYA through a range of fellowships and awards.
TYA/USA Fellowships are designed to offer dynamic opportunities for growth, discovery, and exchange to practitioners in the field of Theatre for Young Audiences. Fellowship applications are available in January and due in February. Fellows are chosen and announced in March.
The National TYA/USA Awards acknowledge the innovative contributions of individuals and organizations in the Theatre for Young Audiences field across the country. Award nominations are open in January and due in February. Awardees are chosen and announced in March.
Click below or scroll to learn more:
Current Fellows
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Khalia Davis
2019 Emerging Leader Fellow
Khalia Davis is a multidisciplinary artist from the San Francisco/Bay Area now living in New York with a passion for children’s entertainment and desire for content creation. BA in Theater Arts from the University of Southern California. Recent: Directed the world premiere play for the very young, Pillowland by Barbara Zinn Krieger with New York City Children’s Theater and the Bay Area Premiere, Judy Moody and Stink and the Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure Hunt by Allison Gregory with Bay Area Children’s Theatre. Upcoming: Directing the world premiere musical, She Persisted the Musical, based on the popular children’s book by Chelsea Clinton with Bay Area Children’s Theatre. Ms. Davis currently teaches with New York City Children’s Theater, the Atlantic Acting School through NYU, for their after school programs as a director and choreographer, and for the Disney Theatrical Group leading music and movement workshops and facilitating audience and community engagement. As a professional movement coordinator, she has devised new works with Bay Area Children’s Theater, New York City Children’s Theater and Atlantic Acting School’s teen conservatory and high school residency program, Staging Success. She is also a director/actor/teaching artist for the nationally-known arts education organization The Story Pirates. As a performer, she has worked regionally with Bay Area Children’s Theatre (Resident Artist), Live Source Theater Group, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Aurora Theatre, and California Shakespeare Theater just to name a few. Tours: Gold Rush the Musical, Rock the Block, Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy the Musical. To learn more about Ms. Davis, check her out at www.khaliashdavis.com.
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Melisa Orozco Vargas
2019 Emerging Leader Fellow
Melisa Orozco Vargas is a candidate for the MFA in Theatre for Young Audiences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where she currently serves as the TYA Coordinator for the Department of Theatre + Dance. Melisa’s approach to theatre is influenced by her diverse personal, academic, and professional background: a multiethnic identity as a child of Hawaiʻi, bachelors degrees in International Relations and Italian from the University of Southern California, an early career in service- and sustainability learning in higher education focusing on community outreach and student development, experiences studying in Italy and volunteering in Brazil, and a transformational motherhood journey. Artistically, she has practiced hula, classical voice and choral music, and dance improvisation; in addition to learning and performing kyogen (Japanese satire) and chuanju (Sichuan “opera”), forms she studied with master artists from Japan and China, respectively, through UHM’s Asian Theatre program. In her research, Melisa has taken a particular interest in curriculum development, applied theatre (especially Theatre of the Oppressed), devised performance, and now theatre for the very young. With two young children, ages 3 and 6, who have accompanied her through graduate school, and an affinity for babies since a child, the TVYA subfield amplifies her experience as a parent and artist.
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Deepmala Tiwari
2019 Emerging Leader Fellow
Deepmala Tiwari was born and raised in New Delhi, India and has a specialization in Theatre In Education from the National School of Drama, Tripura, India. She came to North America to study Theatre for Youth at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the fall of 2018 after a long, rich history of devising, creating, directing, and producing theatre in India. Deepmala began as an actor performing in a number of plays which address female sexuality and gender diversity. Deepmala’s interest in theatre allowed her to engage with children as she worked in hospitals reaching children through hospital clowning. In 2016, Deepmala was awarded a fellowship from the Ministry of Culture in New Delhi as a Young Artist to devise a TYA production. That same year Deepmala founded her own theatre company, The Color Bakery, based in New Delhi, India. Unique in its vision, The Color Bakery worked to bring devised and produced theatre work to communities throughout India. In her most recent work, Deepmala directed Suzan Zeder’s Step on a Crack and will direct the production of Anne Negri’s This Is Not a Test (unpublished) next year. She was also cast in Suzan Zeder’s When She Had Wings and will be touring the Southwest and Northeast regions of the US with the production in the spring of 2019.
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Ashley Laverty
2019 Ann Shaw International TYA Fellow
Ashley Laverty is a theatre maker originally from Massachusetts. She is the founding Artistic Director of Kerfuffle, a theatre company devoted to creating theatre and dance performances with and for very young children, and she most recently directed Nested, a play centered around family separation, love, and home for children under 6 years old. Ashley is the Director of Early Childhood and a Teaching Artist at The Rose Theater in Omaha, Nebraska, where she designs curriculum and facilitates creative drama and musical theatre classes, teaches curricular topics using creative drama tools in classrooms, leads drama integration professional development workshops with early childhood educators, and writes and directs Theatre for the Very Young plays, such as Wynken, Blynken and Nod, and The Music Makers. Other plays for young and very young audiences include The Caterpillar’s Footprint, Nadine’s Coloring Book, Where Our Stuff Goes, and Dotty Dot!, written in collaboration with Travis Kendrick, Ryan Cavanaugh and John Wascavage. As an actress, Ashley has performed nationally for young audiences with the National Theatre for Children, VEE Corporation, Omaha Theater Company for Young People, Roxy Regional Theatre, Vital Theatre Company, and Storyland, a family amusement park. She holds an M.F.A in Theatre for Youth from Arizona State University and a B.A. in Theatre Arts with a concentration in Musical Theatre from Point Park University’s Conservatory of Performing Arts. She is the co-chair of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education’s Early Childhood Network, a Master Teaching Artist on the Nebraska Arts Council Teaching Artist Roster, and she was proud to be one of the five 2018 Artist Fellows at the Union for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE. For more information, please visit www.kerfuffletvy.com and www.ashleylaverty.com.
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Lauren Jost
2018-19 UT Austin TYA Artistic Exchange Fellow
Lauren Jost is a theatre artist and arts educator in New York. She is the Artistic Director of Spellbound Theatre, New York’s award-winning theatre exclusively for the very young. Lauren can occasionally be found performing as a storyteller and puppeteer, but spends most of her time directing and producing Spellbound’s public, school, and national touring theater productions for children ages 0-5. Her work can be seen this year at Miami Theater Center (Wink), Symphony Space (Wink), The Old Stone House (Babywild) and in 30+ schools and early childhood centers around New York City. Additionally, Lauren works as an arts educator with New Victory Theater, Lifetime Arts, the Brooklyn Public Library and New York University, and provides professional development on storytelling, theater, and puppetry for early childhood settings for teachers, artists, and theater companies in a variety of settings. Lauren is mom to J. and L., whose imaginations are her daily inspiration.
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Michelle Kozlak
2018-19 UT Austin TYA Artistic Exchange Fellow
Michelle Kozlak is the Producing Artistic Director and Founder of Arts on the Horizon, dedicated to providing performances and education programs for young people ages 0 to 6 years old. Ms. Kozlak’s arts management career in the Washington, DC area started at the Kennedy Center, where she was the National Touring Manager for the Theater for Young Audiences program and then the Manager of Theater Programming, where she served as General Manager for the Tennessee Williams Explored festival, Mister Roberts, and Mame with Christine Baranski. After almost ten years at the Kennedy Center, Michelle left full-time employment in order to spend more time with her son, Gavin, after he was born. Since that time, she has served as the Casting Director for the Kennedy Center’s Theater for Young Audiences program, the VSA Playwrights Discovery Program productions (2008-2011), and Coming Home, the production that commemorated the grand opening of the Atlas Performing Arts Center. She has a BA in English with a minor in Theatre from the University of Oregon and an MA in Arts Management from American University.
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Giana Blazquez
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Giana Blazquez is a passionate emerging TYA professional committed to the power of youth theatre. She has been involved in Theatre for Young Audiences as a Teaching Artist, Director, and Choreographer for six years. Giana currently serves as the Next Steps/K-4 Program Director at First Stage Children’s Theater and is applying for Graduate School at Arizona State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Central Florida.
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Paulo de Morais Chiossi
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Paulo de Morais Chiossi is an international student from Curitiba, Brazil, and is currently in his senior year at the University of Northern Colorado. He is getting his bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts with an emphasis in Acting and a minor in Dance. Within the field, his biggest passions are Theatre for Young Audiences and Stage Movement (with some extra love for Tadashi Suzuki’s methods). Some of his favorite projects to date include The Transition of Doodle Pequeño (Reno), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Flute), Love’s Labour’s Lost (Longaville), and directing Hush: An Interview With America – all within the UNC School of Theatre Arts and Dance.
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Taylor Jane Cooper
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Taylor Jane Cooper is a theatre artist, educator, and activist working on her degree in theatre education at The University of Texas at Austin. As a student, she currently serves as a member of the UTeach Fine Arts Student Advisory Council where she helps the council bring artists, business professionals, and administrators in the fine arts field to enrich and connect UTeach Fine Arts students in their future careers and artistic endeavors. As an artist, Taylor Jane gravitates toward work that is reflective and empowering of the community around her as an architect of wonder. She hopes to do so by activating communities through creative collaborative art practices. As an educator, Taylor Jane hopes to create culturally responsive, inclusive, and diverse curriculum that uses drama-based strategies to engage and empower young people. As a theatre maker and participator, Taylor Jane is deeply invested in the wonder, power, and magic of theatre for young and very young audiences. In this, her investment centers around moving this field toward more diverse, equitable, and inclusive practices, processes, and stories for young people and those to come.
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Hana Holloway
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Hana Holloway has received training from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, as well as London Academy of Music and the Dramatic Arts, and is a recent graduate from University of North Carolina-Greensboro where she received her BFA in Acting. Although her concentration was in performance, her passions in writing, puppetry, devised theater and Theater for Young Audiences led to opportunities such as working with Peppercorn Theater at The Children’s Museum of Winston Salem, to being a part of the apprentice company at Williamstown Theater Festival, to now being a Program Director for Lights, Camera, Learn! ( a non profit that educates and empowers children through the art of filmmaking). She is currently working on lesson plans for future programs in the Philippines, Tunisia, Turkey, and Spain that incorporate improv and puppetry, and ways we can further edutainment. You can keep up with her travels and upcoming projects on instagram @holleryourway.
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Jasmine Middleton
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Jasmine Middleton is a Junior Acting Major at University of Northern Colorado. In her Sophomore year she played the role of ‘Luna’ in the TYA play Luna by Ramon Esquivel and has had the Theater for Young Audiences bug ever since. She is the co-founder of a theater for young audiences group called The Playground, and is very excited for the opportunity to learn more about the field and how to share it with others.
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Gregory Mytelka
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Gregory Mytelka is an emerging theatre artist and arts administrator passionate about the intersection of educational theatre, community engagement, and theatre for young audiences. Based in Upstate New York, Greg is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in theatre management with a concentration in education from the Syracuse University Department of Drama. Greg has worked and studied with Syracuse Stage, Building Company Theater, and Saratoga Children’s Theatre, most recently serving as the Assistant Director for Syracuse Stage’s Bank of America Children’s Tour Miss Electricity (Kathryn Walat). Greg is especially passionate about working with individuals with special needs and using the expressive arts to empower marginalized communities. A firm believer that “children’s theatre creates adult audiences”, Greg hopes to make the performing arts accessible to individuals of all ages.
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Willow Jade Norton
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Willow Jade Norton is an Oregon-based Director and Teacher focused on new work development. As Artist in Residence at Lane Community College, she developed and directed Constant Revolution and Turning Red. Recent directing projects include Quicksilver for Imagine That Eugene, Marjorie Prime for Oregon Contemporary Theatre, In the Nest Room or the vibrator play for Lane Community College, LUNA PARK and RAIN AND ZOE SAVE THE WORLD for Oregon Performance Lab, where she was Artistic Director; Goodbye Avis at New York Theatre Workshop; ¡Bocón!, RENT, and A Thousand Cranes for The Majestic Theatre; and S.H.A.V.E.D. at HERE Arts Center. Norton is a Teaching Artist for The Village School, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Lane Community College, and Tectonic Theater Project’s Moment Work Technique. She will receive her Masters in Nonprofit Management with a Certificate in Arts Management in June of 2019 from the University of Oregon. Norton holds a BFA in Theater: Original Works from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA. She was also Associate Treasurer at The Shubert Theatre working on MATILDA The Musical on Broadway. And currently on the Board for ArtCity Eugene.
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Marisol Rosa-Shapiro
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Marisol Rosa-Shapiro is a Seattle and New York-based performer, director, teaching artist, and creator of original works of theater. She is a graduate of Princeton University and of Giovanni Fusetti’s Lecoq-based Helikos School of Theatre Creation in Florence, Italy. Her specialties include mask theater, mime, clown, commedia dell’arte, improvisation, physical comedy, movement- and ensemble-based creation and more. Marisol’s recent performing credits include The Up Close Festival at the New Ohio Theatre; Barn Arts Collective’s four-actor Twelfth Night; Play Your Part Seattle’s More Than Maria; Convergences Theater Collective’s Babel; and Spellbound Theater’s Wink and The Last Coin. Her own red nose clown solo show, Here at Home premiered in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and has since toured to the NY Clown Theater Festival, Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble’s Women’s Solo Performance Festival, Philllips Academy at Andover and Feast Art Center in Tacoma, WA. Current directing projects include In SEAtu, a series of satirical shorts supported by a City Artist grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture; and Soledad Ensemble’s The Seven Ravens Project which was part of the New Victory Theater’s LabWorks development program for theater for young audiences and families in 2018 (www.thesevenravensproject.com). Marisol has worked as a teaching artist for The New Victory Theater, Tectonic Theater Project, Seattle Repertory Theater, Seattle Children’s Theater, Seattle Theatre Group, Village Theatre, the 5th Avenue Theatre, Partners for Youth Empowerment, Seeds of Peace, and many more. She is a proud volunteer performer and teacher with Clowns Without Borders USA, and is a 2019 Jim Rye Fellow with International Performing Arts for Youth (IPAY).
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Sarah Tan
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Sarah Tan is a deviser, producer, performer, and educator born and raised in Singapore. She is currently an MFA student in Theatre for Youth at Arizona State University. As an artist with a deep passion for building spaces of inclusivity, Sarah believes in the importance of creating relevant and impactful work (on stage and in classrooms) that bring together performance, education, social justice, and community engagement. With her personal work strongly leaning in the direction of devised theatre, Sarah envisions this theatrical form as a tool to artistically communicate the complexities of personal experiences through interdisciplinary performance. Learn more about Sarah’s work at www.sarahtanhy.com.
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Hanna Williamson
2019 Colleen Toohey Porter TYA/USA Festival & Conference Fellow
Hanna Williamson is a Junior Acting major at the University of Northern Colorado. She is Co-President and Co- founder of The Playground, a theater for young audiences student group that focuses on creative play. Her passion was ignited with her first TYA tour— Luna, by Ramon Esquivel, in the Northern Colorado area. Some of her other roles include Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, Tilly in She Kills Monsters.
Current Award Recipients
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Rosemary Newcott
2019 Harold Oaks Award for Sustained Excellence in TYA
ROSEMARY NEWCOTT
Rosemary Newcott (Director) is the Sally G. Tomlinson Artistic Director of Theatre for Youth and Families and has worked at the Alliance Theatre since 1988. Her directing credits include Paige in Full; The Jungle Book; Alice Between (premiere); A Christmas Carol; Cinderella and Fella (premiere); Slur (premiere); Waiting for Balloon (premiere); The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Pearl Cleage’s Tell Me My Dream (premiere);Courage (premiere); The Wizard of Oz; Seussical; Class of 3000 Live! (premiere); Go Dog Go!; Einstein Is a Dummy (premiere); The Book of Ruth; The Hobbit; and many more.
She directed the Alliance’s Palefsky Collision Project for its first 10 years and pioneered the Alliance’s innovative Kathy & Ken Bernhardt Theatre for the Very Young. Favorite directing experiences nationally include Jason Invisible and Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical for the Kennedy Center, and Frida Libre for La Jolla Playhouse.
Rosemary was named an Atlanta Lexus Leader of the Arts in December 2001 and also received a prestigious Princess Grace Foundation Fellowship. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution named her the best director of the year in 2002 and, in 2005, she won the GTC Distinguished Career Award. She is a 2009 recipient of the Princess Grace Special Projects award and several Suzi Bass awards, including the 2010 Spirit of Suzi award and the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award. She has served on the boards of TYA/USA and Kennesaw State University’s theater department. Rosemary has degrees from New Jersey City University and Northwestern University, for whom she currently serves as an Industry Mentor. She is a member of AEA and SDC. She is embarking on a new incentive called CONNECT which is a creative experience for early stage folks with dementia and their caregivers. This is Rosemary’s final season as Alliance Artistic Director of Theatre for Youth and Families, and she will be forever grateful for the many gifts she has been afforded through her association with so many remarkable human beings.
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Stan Foote
2019 Harold Oaks Award for Sustained Excellence in TYA
STAN FOOTE
Stan has worked for Oregon Children’s Theatre for 28 years and has been the Artistic Director since the 2001-2002 season. Stan received his BA in Theater from Sacramento State University has been directing, teaching, and acting for 35 years. He has received Portland Drammy Awards for Outstanding Direction for OCT’s Stuart Little and The Gondoliers at Mocks Crest. His production of Kiss of The Spider Woman, originally produced by Miracle Theater and remounted for Borderlands Theater in Tucson, was named the outstanding Drama of the 2002-2003 Tucson season.
Stan was honored as a national leader in Theater for Young Audiences by being elected to the board of Theatre for Young Audiences/USA. His passion for creating new works has led to directing staged readings at the Kennedy Center’s New Visions New Voices and NYU’s New Plays for Young Audiences. He had the privilege of working with two Newbery Award-winning authors, Lois Lowry and Louis Sachar, to adapt their novels for OCT’s stages. Stan’s direction and guidance was instrumental in commissioning Eric Coble’s adaptation of Lois Lowry’s The Giver to audiences in Portland, which has led to more than 300 productions nationally and internationally. The Giver was also the beginning of OCT’s New Works Initiative, commissioning and producing one or more new works each season. In the process of commissioning these new plays, with Stan’s guidance, OCT has partnered nationally to co-commission plays with First Stage in Milwaukee, Dallas Children’s Theatre, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, and Magik Theatre in San Antonio.
Stan loves working in this community; teaching classes at Friends of the Children, Saint Mary’s Home for Boys, and The Boys and Girls Clubs. He also helps mentor the young actors in OCT’s Young Professionals Company, a year-long theatrical training program for teens. Directing highlights include The Laramie: Ten Years Later, benefiting Basic Rights Oregon and the Matthew Shepard Fund, and Falsettos in Concert, benefiting Our House. Other non-TYA directing projects include Jesus Christ Superstar, Into the Woods, Blue Plate Special, Psycho Beach Party, Strange Snow and Pump Boys and Dinettes. Stan is grateful to live in Portland, Oregon and to have worked with the brilliant artists in this community.
Stan’s guiding belief has been that “young people are intelligent growing human beings.”
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Courtney J. Boddie
2019 TYA Community Impact Award
COURTNEY J. BODDIE
Courtney J. Boddie, New Victory Director of Education/School Engagement, oversees all programs related to school communities including the New Victory school partnership program, teacher professional development training in the performing arts and an innovative approach in the professional development of more than 50 New Victory Teaching Artists. In the last 7 years alone, Ms. Boddie has expanded the theater’s scope of work in such programs as Victory Dance, which provides free dance and dance education to NYC summer schools; Create, a theater-based teacher professional development track for the city’s Pre-K expansion, the largest in the nation; and GIVE, a brand new initiative to address equitable student engagement in inclusion classrooms.
For the 2019 TYA Community Impact Award, TYA/USA recognizes her leadership in New Victory SPARK (Schools with the Performing Arts Reach Kids), a robust multi-year arts program that has transformed New York City school communities previously underserved in the arts. Through intensive relationships with schools’ administrative and teaching staffs, New Victory SPARK utilizes the theater’s existing school programs–including live performances by international arts companies, a highly trained ensemble of Teaching Artists and smartly-designed classroom curricula–to supply performing arts engagement that is as sustainable, creative and impactful.
During her tenure at The New Victory, the Theater received the Arts Education Award (2008) from Americans for the Arts and a special Drama Desk Award (2012) for “…nurturing a love of theater in young people.” Ms. Boddie is the Creator and Host of Teaching Artistry with Courtney J. Boddie, a monthly podcast featuring engaging and investigative interviews, roundtable conversations and panels with artists and arts education leaders. She is an adjunct professor at New York University and The New School. Ms. Boddie was President of the Association of Teaching Artists (ATA) 2015 to 2017 and is currently on the Board of Directors (Treasurer, 2018-19). Additionally, she serves on the Teaching Artist Committee of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, the editorial board for the Teaching Artist Journal and is a Women’s Center Media SheSource. Prior to joining The New Victory Theater in 2003, Ms. Boddie was Program Associate for Empire State Partnerships (NYSCA) and a teaching artist for Roundabout Theatre Company. She received her Master’s degree from the Educational Theatre Graduate Program at New York University.
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Chicago Children's Theatre
2019 TYA Artistic Innovation Award
CHICAGO CHILDREN’S THEATRE
Led by Founding Artistic Director, Jacqueline Russell, Chicago Children’s Theatre was founded in 2005 with a big idea: Chicago is the greatest theatre city in the world, and it deserves a great children’s theatre. Nearly 15 years later, CCT is Chicago’s largest professional theater company devoted exclusively to children and young families, and has established a national reputation for the production of first-rate children’s theatre, with professional writing, performing, and directorial talent and high-quality design and production expertise.
Chicago Children’s Theatre has produced 20 world premieres in the last 12 years including The Selfish Giant, The Hundred Dresses, Jackie and Me, The Houdini Box, Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money, Leo Lionni’s Frederick, Wonderland, Alice’s Rock & Roll Adventure, Jabari Dreams of Freedom, The Year I Didn’t Go To School: A Homemade Circus, Manual Cinema’s Magic City, My Wonderful Birthday Suit!, Last Stop on Market Street, X Marks the Spot, The World Inside Me (with New York’s Spellbound Theatre) and The Watsons Go To Birmingham – 1963. These productions enjoyed successful inaugural runs in Chicago, many followed by productions at theaters across the U.S.
Chicago Children’s Theatre has garnered six NEA Art Works grants, supporting the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence. In 2017, CCT became the first theater for young audiences in the U.S. to win a National Theatre Award from the American Theatre Wing, creators of the Tony Awards.
In January 2017, the company celebrated the opening of its new, permanent home, Chicago Children’s Theatre, The Station, located at 100 S. Racine Avenue in Chicago’s West Loop community. The building, formerly the Chicago Police Station for the 12th District, was repurposed into a beautiful, LEED Gold-certified, mixed-use performing arts, education and community engagement facility that now welcomes all Chicago families. CCT also continues to grow its education programs, offering classes, workshops, winter and spring break camps, and summer camps for ages 0 to 13. CCT offers free tickets to more than 5,000 low-income students each season in partnership with Chicago Public Schools.
In addition to leading Chicago Children’s Theatre’s new play development, main stage, and education programs, Jacqueline Russell is the creator of the Red Kite Project, a multi-sensory interactive theatre program tailored specifically to children with special needs. Recently, Jacqueline created and directed an innovative production, X Marks the Spot, a multi-sensory experience inspired by her work with children with visual impairments. In 2010, she was appointed by the U.S. State Department to serve as Cultural Envoy to Canada, was honored with the 2013 “Hero of the Year Award” from the Chicago chapter of Autism Speaks, and was recently honored as one of 20 women who have shaped arts and culture in Chicago on the Kerry James Marshall mural at the Chicago Culture Center.
Chicago Children’s Theatre is led by Co-Founders, Artistic Director Jacqueline Russell and Board Chair Todd Leland, with Board President Eric Neveux. For more, visit chicagochildrenstheatre.org.