"Jimmies," produced by Howards Frog Productions advanced to the semifinals of the Strawberry Festival on February 16, 2010. Featuring Royale Mosley, Rashad Edwards, and Stephen Medvidick, Directed by Erin Woodward, and Stage Managed by Jacqueline Deniz Young, the play about a mother's struggle to redeem her dead son garnered an enthusiastic response both for its writing and the top-drawer performances of the actors. Mosley and Medvidick were nominated in the Best Actress and Actor categories, and Woodward received a  festival Best Director nomination. the Strawberry Festival is presented twice yearly by Black Experimental Theatre, Van Dirk Fisher, Artistic Director, through The Riant Theatre Deborah Greenhut's play, "Difficult Subjects," a 2006 Strawberry Wild Night Winner, was published in Best of the Strawberry One-Act Festival, Volume 2; her play, How I Live. With Terror has also appeared in The Strawberry Festival.

LA playwright Jamie Pachino was awarded the Primus Prize for her play, SPLITTING INFINTY. The Primus Prize is awarded by the Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation and the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) to an emerging woman theater artist, either a playwright, artistic director or director. The award recipient receives $10,000 2009 and a trip to the ATCA conference at the O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut.

SPLITTING INFINITY is a smart and witty exploration of faith, science, love, and ambition surrounding Leigh Sangold, a Nobel prize-winning astrophysicist, who takes on the definitive scientific challenge: to use physics to prove whether God exists. Leigh's quest for a renewed sense of self in her life threatens her closest relationships with Saul Lieberman, a tenderhearted Rabbi who's been in love with her since childhood, and her lover, a competitive post-doctoral student who is the son of a Christian Scientist. Splitting Infinity tests the boundaries of relationships and zealous ambition. It seeks to answer the questions we have about ourselves, each other, and the universe through the scientific and religious equation.

Upon winning the award, Pachino said, "The Primus Prize is one that is extremely respected by women playwrights and I am so honored and delighted to be recognized."

Jaime Pachino is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter with national and international credits. Her play, Splitting Infinity, was named the winner of the Laurie Foundation Theatre Visionary Award, and the STAGE competition for plays about science. Other plays include Waving Goodbye (world premiere Steppenwolf Theatre, winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, and Chicago's Jeff Award for Best New Work); The Return to Morality (winner of eight national awards, produced throughout the U.S.); Aurora's Motives, Race and Theodora: An Unauthorized Biography.

The Primus Prize has historically been awarded to an outstanding female playwright recognizing a single script. While the award committee retains an interest in honoring achievement in the writing of plays, it will also actively consider female artists whose work is outstanding in other theatrical disciplines, including artistic direction, stage direction, acting, design, production and dramaturgy. The award generally will seek to honor women of significant achievement who have not yet attained national prominence.

For more than 30 years, the American Theatre Critics Association, Inc. has provided opportunities for members to explore the vast artistic resources of our National Theatre and of theatre around the globe. We work to foster greater communication among theatre critics in the United States and abroad, advocate absolute freedom of expression in theatre and theatre criticism, strive to increase public awareness of the theatre as an important national resource and reaffirm the individual critic's right to disagree with the opinions of colleagues.

The American Theatre Critics Association is the only national association of professional theatre critics. Our several hundred members work for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and on-line services across the United States.

Judith Glass Collins' One-Act Play --Taste
will be given a staged reading on February 16th and 23rd at the Key City
Public Theatre in Port Townsend, Washington, as part of the 14th
Annual Playwright's Festival.

The League of Professional Theatre Women (Co-Producers, Joan D. Firestone and Rachel Reiner) presented a New Play Festival at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City on November 9, 2009. Nine short plays and one short musical were presented to a sold-out audience.

Legendary American actress Kathleen Chalfant (ANGELS IN AMERICA, WIT) performed the role of Stacy Lee Madison in Hamilton's AND THEN I WENT INSIDE.

Donna Spector's full-length play "Not For the Ferryman" won the Eileen Heckart Drama Award.

Mary Steelsmith's HAPPY AND GAY, is the winner of the ten minute play division of the 2009 Eileen Heckart

Drama for Seniors Competition.

SYNOPSIS: 
You've seen these women before. They stay in the background, seemingly content to decorate the church fellowship hall with crepe' paper, bring the funeral service casseroles and knit baby shower booties.  They've seen it all -- until today.  Today, history is being made at the church as it hosts its first gay wedding. Betty worries over the proper "gay" way to hang crepe' paper streamers, while Veronica stresses about what people will say about their preacher's radical decision to use the church for these kinds of affairs.  Her fears are deeper and more personal than she will admit.

 

 

Second prize for play written in Esperanto, at the Esperanto yearly competition "Belartaj Konkursoj", during the Universal Congress of Esperanto in Byalistok (Polland) July 2009.

Sweet Potato Pie(s) is a Finalist for the Saint Mary Hall's "Spring Shorts" 10-Minute Play Festival in San Antonio, Texas.

 
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Bernice Sizemore's 70th Birthday was one of three Finalists for the first Kentucky Theatre Association New Play Competition. 

For THE SEER OF LITTLE WORLDS, 2009.