COLLABORATION AWARDS

The Collaboration Award: Women Working With Women is designed to encourage professional women in the arts and media to work collaboratively with women from other arts and media specializations on the creation of new work. The award honors successful collaborations among women from different specializations in the arts and media.

Awarded every few years, the Collaboration Awards encourage professional women in the arts and media from different specializations to work collaboratively on the creation of new work. The award recognizes the best of these collaborations and goes to a winning project and its two creators. 2019 marked the sixth time the Collaboration Awards were presented.

The honorees were:

Acclaimed Collaboration Award
EGG (directed by Marianna Palka, written by Risa Mickenberg, produced by Alysia Reiner, David Alan Basche, and Michele Ganeless, starring Alysia Reiner, Christina Hendricks, Anna Camp, David Alan Basche, and Gbenga Akkinagbe)

Collaboration Award Winner
Preservation     Deborah Yarchun (Dramatists Guild) and Jess Chayes (Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, League of Professional Theatre Women)

Honored Finalists
Courage - Melissa Bell (DG) and Tannis Kowalchuk (TRU)
Click - Katherine Carter SDC (LPTW) and Jacqueline Goldfinger (DG)
United Flight 232 - Vanessa Stalling (SDC) and Brenda Barrie (AEA)

Special Mentions
Scars - Ophira Eisenberg (SAG-AFTRA) and Maggie Cino (DG)
The Uncivil Ones - Charissa Bertels (AEA SAG-AFTRA) and Ayumi Okada (AFM 802- Associated Musicians of Greater NY - Local 802 AFM/ DG - Dramatists Guild)

Student Film Winners
Bread Machine - Shelby Hougui & Julia De Santis (SVA Film and Animation), co-founders of JuJu Films

Past winners are: playwright T.D. Mitchell and director Sheryl Kaller for the play Queens for a Year (2015), Jane Edith Wilson and Grace Lee for their mockumentary, Janeane from Des Moines (2013), playwright Stefanie Zadravec and director Daniella Topol for their collaboration on the play The Electric Baby (2011); writer Jennifer Gibbs and director Kristin Marting for the play The Stranger (2008), and playwright Jennifer Maisel and director Wendy McClellan for the play Birds (2006).

Quotes from honorees:

“We are so excited and deeply honored to be celebrated in the first ever ACCLAIMED COLLABORATION AWARD! Collaborating with the extraordinary women on this project has been a joy, and we hope we inspire others to choose female collaborations!"

-     Alysia Reiner, 2019 Winner

“We’re thrilled for the opportunity to continue to work together through Women in the Arts & Media Coalitions’ Collaboration Award! We’ve been eager for a way to continue our collaboration since we workshopped Preservation for its first reading at the William Inge Center for the Arts. The award came as a wonderful surprise and will be pivotal in furthering the life of this new play.”

-     Deborah Yarchun and Jess Chayes, 2019 Winners

Quotes from past winners:

"The Award offers much-needed encouragement during this time of virulent anti-feminist, anti-arts, anti-culture rhetoric, --rhetoric and policy that have very real economic consequences for women trying to sustain a career in the theatre. As someone being told my work is 'too feminist' to be produced now, I depend on organizations like this one to keep me from losing heart."

-     TD Mitchell playwright 2015 winner

“We are so honored to be accepting this award. One of the best aspects of making this very unconventional film was working together. We got it done using our creativity, mutual respect for one another, quality Skype-time with our families back home, plain old hard work, and as much good humor as we could muster. It means the world to us to have our film embraced by an organization that celebrates women in collaboration.”

-       Jane Edith Wilson and Grace Lee, 2013 Winners

“It was and honor for Stefanie and I to receive the Collaboration Award.  It came at a critical moment for the DEVELOPMENT of Electric Baby as the award supported our work together on two DEVELOPMENTAL workshops and our world premiere production of the play at Quantum Theatre in Pittsburgh.  Not only did this award support our work financially it gave our collaboration recognition in the field.  Stefanie continues to be a key collaborator of mine on subsequent projects and having our relationship recognized publicly is invaluable.”

-       Daniella Topol, Director, 2011 Winner

“New work needs momentum.  It’s simply not a reality that a play can be written in the attic and then magically find a production.  Or that one production will lead to a second or third production.  People need to hear about work.  They need to hear about the artists who make the work.  There is no question that this award not only helped The Electric Baby become a better play, but it gave the baby a life.”

-       Stefanie Zadravec, Playwright, 2011 Winner

“The Collaboration Award’s encouragement of women working together is terrific.  It made all the difference in providing my collaborator and I with the time and support we needed to create a complex and dynamic theatre work.”

-       Kristin Marting, Director, 2008 Winner

“The evening of the Collaboration Awards was imbued with theatrical magic.  Wendy directed an excerpt from my play, Birds, that captured the spirit of the play with great response from a wildly supportive audience.  Birds is the third play of mine that we worked on together. It was a beautiful jumping off point for us in our process.  It provided the opportunity for us to mine even deeper in our exploration of the world of this complicated play, and the support, enthusiasm and appreciation of this body of amazing women helped carry us through to the next step of our artistic journey.”

-      Jen Maisel, Playwright, 2006 Winner

Contact:        

press@womenartsmediacoalition.org