Company One accepting award nominations

http://companyone.org/awards.shtml

Each year Company One honors 2 individuals at its Gala celebration in May. We invite you to place your nominations for individuals for either award by emailing nominations@companyone.org

In 2009 Company One established 2 awards in recognition of outstanding individuals in the theatre community. The awards are named after two of the most important movers and shakers in the Boston Community and advisors to Company One.

Company One’s David Wheeler Award - given annually in recognition of an emerging talent in the Boston theatre scene.

Company One’s Lois Roach Award - given annually in recognition of outstanding commitment to the Boston theatre community.

David Wheeler - On Broadway, he directed Richard III with Al Pacino, and The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, for which Mr. Pacino won the Tony Award for Best Actor. Regional theatres include the Guthrie Theatre, Alley Theatre, Paper Mill Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Arizona Theatre Company, Pittsburgh Playhouse, and the Charles de Rochefort Theatre in Paris, where he directed the French premiere of Edward Albee's The Zoo Story.

As the artistic director of the Theatre Company of Boston (TCB) from 1963 to 75, Mr. Wheeler directed over eighty productions. Among these were ten by Pinter, seven by Brecht, five by Albee, nine by Beckett, two by O'Neill, and numerous works by new writers such as Ed Bullins, Jeffrey Bush, John Hawkes, Adrienne Kennedy, and Sam Shepard. Through these productions and others, he helped to launch the careers of then-unknown actors including Paul Benedict, Larry Bryggman, John Cazale, Stockard Channing, Blythe Danner, Robert DeNiro, Robert Duvall, Hector Elizondo, Spalding Gray, Paul Guilfoyle, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jon Voight, Ralph Waite, and James Woods. His film The Local Stigmatic (with Mr. Pacino)—adapted from the play by Heathcote Williams—was presented at the Montreal Film Festival and screened at the Whitney Museum and the MOMA. It will be released in 2006.

Mr. Wheeler's honors include the Elliot Norton Award for his work on No Man’s Land and on Misalliance, the St. Botolph Club Foundation's Award for Distinction in the Performing Arts, and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Award. He has taught and directed at Harvard University, Boston University, MIT, Brandeis, Barnard, Colorado College, and Circle-in-the-Square. He has directed student productions at U.N.C. Chapel Hill, U.C. Irvine and Long Beach, and Évora, Portugal. After receiving his masters at Harvard, Mr. Wheeler trained with José Quintero in New York during the great "O'Neill years" of the 1950's.

Lois Roach - Lois Roach’s play The Emancipation of Mandy and Miz Ellie will be receiving its world premiere with Company One in May 2010. She is currently directing Legacy of Light by Karen Zacarias for the Lyric Stage Company. Most recently Lois directed ARTiculation at Company One and Treemonisha by Scott Joplin for Opera Providence. In recent years, she directed the world premiere of A House With No Walls, at the New Repertory Theater in Watertown, the world premiere of Six Rounds/ Six Lessons with Company One at the Boston Center for the Arts, as well as the Boston premieres of Crowns, and Living Out at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston. An award-winning producer and director, she was commissioned to write and direct a performance piece for the 25th anniversary of Casa Myrna Vazquez, a shelter for battered women, which featured actress Phylicia Rashad. In Derry, Northern Ireland, she worked with a group of artists on the theater project, Borderlands, which brought together women from the Catholic, Protestant and Southern communities. Lois also teaches at Wellesley College, works with First Night and coordinates the Stony Brook Initiative at Northeastern University.