Andy Sandberg, Artistic Director and CEO of the Hermitage Artist Retreat, announced today that Imani Uzuri, the 2022 recipient of the $35,000 Hermitage Major Theater Award (HMTA), will have a workshop presentation of her newly commissioned musical this month at New York Theatre Workshop on Monday, November 18th. Imani Uzuri is an award-winning composer, vocalist, librettist, improviser, and lyricist, and the Hermitage is collaborating with NYTW to present this concert reading of Uzuri’s new musical Lighthouse of the Singing Birds to an invitation-only audience. Her original commission is coming to fruition less than two years from the date the recipient learned of her recognition.
The Hermitage Major Theater Award was established in 2021 to recognize a playwright or theater artist with a substantial commission to create a new, original, and impactful piece of theater. This national, jury-selected award, established by the Hermitage with generous support from Flora Major and the Kutya Major Foundation, offers one of the largest nonprofit theater commissions in the country. Uzuri receives a cash prize of $35,000, as well as a residency at the Hermitage (Sarasota County, Florida), plus developmental and financial support for these upcoming developmental readings in New York. The prize is intended to bridge the connection between the Hermitage (Sarasota County, Florida), where the commission is born, and other leading arts and culture centers around the world, including New York, London, Chicago, and notable arts capitals where great theater is frequently developed and presented.
HMTA winners are nominated and selected by a jury of recognized arts leaders in the field of theater. The 2022 Award Committee that selected Imani Uzuri includes two-time Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori, Tony Award-nominated producer, educator, and artistic director Christopher Burney, and New York Theatre Workshop Artistic Director Patricia McGregor.
“It has been thrilling to see the work that’s come to life from past HMTA recipients Madeleine George and Shariffa Ali, and it is incredibly exciting to be seeing Imani Uzuri’s original musical now coming to fruition,” said Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg. “Imani is an extraordinary talent who engages fellow artists with light and innovation, and we’re honored to play a role in supporting her artistic journey. Bringing original works to life through this commissioning program is a true honor and a gift to the theater, made possible by the generosity of Flora Major, who has entrusted the Hermitage with this invaluable opportunity.”
Lighthouse of the Singing Birds is a magical realist musical with book, music, and lyrics by Hermitage Major Theater Award winner Imani Uzuri. Told through ephemeral puppetry, song and immersive storytelling Lighthouse of the Singing Birds deals with themes of mysticism, death, liminality, ecology, Black American vernacular artistic culture (music, art, foodways, folklore healing modalities and so forth) as well as illuminating the sublimated history of Black lighthouse keepers and celebrating Black American vernacular sacred/secular song traditions. Somewhere in the Outer Banks of North Carolina on a Sound whose beach has purple sand (from coral), a bird sanctuary, a lighthouse, and elusive wild horses, Jasmine Songbird is on the precipice. Surrounded by her quirky intergenerational family who are singers, healers, quilters, foragers, instrument makers, moonshiners and more, along with their eclectic community, Jasmine lives where the mundane and mystical merge every day. The spiritual and ancestral realm are ever present. The veil is thin. The family’s healing work is to lovingly sing people in hospice across the threshold. Their family song is “Every day is H O L Y.”
Casting for the first full-length reading of Lighthouse of the Singing Birds includes Tony Award winner Lillias White (The Life, Hadestown, Disney’s “Hercules”), Nichelle Lewis (The Wiz on Broadway, Ragtime at Encores), plus stage and screen talents Charlie Burnham (violinist/composer), Starr Busby(Octet, The Beautiful Lady), Jared Wayne Gladly (Aladdin, Frozen), Yayoi Ikawa (jazz pianist/composer), Polanco Jones (The Wiz), Marla Lou (Theater Producers of Color 2023, Hadestown), Matthew D. Morrison (musicologist), and Mercy Viola (cultural worker/performance artist).
Upon announcing Uzuri as the third recipient of the HMTA, 2022 Award Committee member and NYTW Artistic Director Patricia McGregor noted, “When I think of the great orchestration of life, we might miss a note – but when that note reveals itself, when it is given the space to be a part of the orchestration, we are all richer. I’m excited for Imani and what this award can do for her and for this intimate, magical, liberatory, intergenerational piece. I’m also excited for us, and I’m very grateful to the Hermitage because this award is going to allow for this ‘note’ in the great orchestration of life, to sing, live, and breathe in a way that it legitimately might not have without this moment, this opportunity – and we will all benefit so greatly from that.”
Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright, Hermitage Fellow, trustee, and HTMA Juror Doug Wright said of the Hermitage Major Theater Award: “In a challenged theatrical landscape, the Hermitage has done something heroic; they have instituted a brand new, financially generous commission for a playwright of demonstrable achievement to draft a new work. It is one of the premier commissions of its kind, and it could not come at a more auspicious time.”
Past recipients of the Hermitage Major Theater Award include Madeleine George (2021), who is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence, and she currently is a writer and producer for Hulu’s hit series “Only Murders in the Building.” George presented the first full-length reading of her new play The Sore Loser to an invitation-only audience at MCC Theatre last winter. The Sore Loser is a Faustian comedy set in a bowling alley. It’s a play about power, domination, and the death of the patriarchy – as told through a small-town bowling tournament. Theater-maker and director Shariffa Ali was selected as the second recipient of the Hermitage Major Theater Award. Ali shared an in-process presentation of her newly devised work Hero for an invitation-only audience on in November of 2023, also at MCC Theater. Ali provided an overview and excerpts from this heartwarming and inspiring new play with music, set in a small South African town and inspired by the true story of Shariffa’s longtime friend and collaborator Vuyo Sotashe.
Olivier Award-winning playwright and librettist Chris Bush (Standing at the Sky’s Edge) was announced in January as the fourth recipient of the Hermitage Major Theater Award, and the Hermitage will present a workshop reading of her original commission in London in the fall of 2025. The fifth recipient of the HMTA will be announced soon.