Distinguished Achievement Award Winners

JOSÉ RIVERA is a recipient of Obie Awards for Marisol and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, both produced by The Public Theatre, NY, and seen regionally and internationally. Other plays include Cloud Tectonics (Playwrights Horizons, Humana Festival, La Jolla Playhouse), Boleros for the Disenchanted (Yale Rep, Huntington Playhouse), Sueño (Hartford Stage, Manhattan Class Company), Sonnets for an Old Century (Barrow Group), School of the Americas (Public Theatre), Massacre (Sing to Your Children) (Goodman Theatre, Rattlestick), Brainpeople (ACT/San Francisco), Adoration of the Old Woman (Sundance Theatre Lab, INTAR, La Jolla Playhouse), The House of Ramon Iglesia (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Another Word for Beauty (Goodman, New York Stage and Film), The Maids (INTAR), The Kiss of the Spiderwoman (Menier Chocolate Factory, London), Each Day Dies with Sleep (Circle Rep, Berkeley Rep). “The Motorcycle Diaries” was nominated for 2005 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar – making him the first Puerto Rican writer ever nominated for an Academy Award. It was also nominated for a BAFTA and Writers Guild Award and received top screenwriting awards in Argentina and Spain. “On the Road” premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. “Trade” was the first film to premiere at the United Nations. Rivera co-created and produced “Eerie, Indiana,” (NBC) and was a consultant and writer on “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels” (Showtime) 2019. He will be the sole writer of the Netflix series based on One Hundred Years of Solitude. Rivera’s short film “The Fall of a Sparrow” has been seen in film festivals around the country. In 2020 he directed the world premiere workshop of his play Lovesong (Imperfect) at the 14th Street Y as well as the short film “The Civet.” His most recent play Your Name Means Dream was part of the Rattlestick Playwrights Jam, 2020, and read at the 2020 Sundance Theatre Lab. His latest screenplay is “A Song for the Recycled Orchestra” about the kids in Paraguay who made their instruments out of landfill. He has served on the boards of Theatre Communication Group and the Sundance Institute and mentored at Sundance Screenwriting Labs in Utah, Jordan, and India. 

GUS EDWARDSis an Afro-Caribbean writer and dramatist whose plays and writings have been showcased by the prominent Negro Ensemble Company, as well various theatre companies throughout the United States. He is acknowledged as an intense author who explores unconventional topics in his plays, and one who has been a central figure in the African American theatrical world, receiving praise and acclaim from critics and audiences alike. Edwards was born in Antigua, and grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, on the island of St. Thomas. His early days in acting go back to his work in repertory theater in St. Thomas and the Caribbean, where he met actor Sidney Poitier, who suggested that he move to the United States to expand his theatrical opportunities. Edwards moved to New York in 1959, where he received dramatic training in theater from Stella Adler and William Hickey at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York. He eventually became one of Adler’s protégés. He also studied film at the New York Institute of Photography. Although he landed minor acting roles in film (“The Pazvnbroker”, 1965 and “Stiletto”, 1969), as well as many roles in plays, the limited access to the theatre as black actor motivated Edwards to start writing plays. As a dramatic writer, Edwards is mostly self-taught, admittedly in part due to his concern that his creativity might be restricted by expectations based on the dominant canon taught in schools.  For much of his early career in the United States, Edwards worked as a bartender, store manager, and waiter in order to make ends meets. His community of relationships became an inroad toward his plays being read, which led to his being introduced to Douglas Turner Ward, one of the co-founders of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). Several years later, the NEC produced his play The Offering, which was met with excellent reviews. Edwards has written more than 12 plays, most of which were first produced by the Negro Ensemble Company. Among his most important works are: The Offering (1977), Black Body Blues (1978), Old Phantoms (1979), These Fallen Angels (1980), Weep Not for Me (1981), Tenement (1983), Manhattan Made Me (1983), Ramona (1986), and Louie and Ophelia (1986). He has also written several works for television including “Aftermath” (1979) and the TV adaptation for James Baldwin novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain” (1985). Considered one of the foremost historians of the Negro Ensemble Company, he wrote the narration for a documentary on its history for PBS.In addition to his substantive work as a playwright, Edwards has built a respectable career as a drama scholar. He has taught theatrical writing at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Iona College, Bloomfield College and the North Carolina School of the Arts. He is now retired from his post as associate professor of theater at Arizona State University in Tempe, where he directed the very successful Multi-Ethnic Theatre, and taught in the film studies program. Edwards has been active in many theatrical organizations, literary boards and committees including The New Dramatists, New York State Council of the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts. He has received grants and awards from many of these organizations as well as from the Rockefeller Foundation. Gus Edwards is one of the first Caribbean writers to contribute to American theater.

CULTURE CLASH was formed in 1984 in San Francisco’s historic Mission District. Culture Clash is Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Siguenza. In their early career, they performed sketch comedy with sharp political views through a Chicano lens. In 1988, the group began writing full length comedic plays including Bowl of Beings (PBS Great Performances), The Mission (Los Angeles Theater Center) and The Birds, an adaptation of Aristophanes’ play (South Coast Repertory). In the 1990s, they began writing and performing site-specific work commissioned by cities, including Bordertown (San Diego), Nuyorican Stories (New York), Anthems (Washington, D. C.), The Mission Magic Mystery Tour (San Francisco), Chavez Ravine (Los Angeles) and Culture Clash in AmeriCCa (Boston). The collective created Zorro in Hell for Berkeley Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse and PEACE, directed by Bill Rauch, for the Getty Villa. Montoya is sole author of Water & Power and Palestine, New Mexico, commissioned by Center Theatre Group. At thirty-plus years, Culture Clash remains a prominent Chicano/Latino performance troupe in the country, with work ranging from sharp sketch comedy to drama to adaptations of Aristophanes to co-writing Frank Loesser’s long lost musical Señor Discretion Himself based on a story by the late Budd Schulberg.This prolific group most recent plays include: American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in Ashland, Oregon. This play was selected to launch American Revolutions. Peace at the Getty Villa; Palestine, New Mexico at the Mark Taper Forum; Culture Clash in AmeriCCa at venues throughout the U.S. Revival was performed in Spring 2015 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in LA for Center Theater Group. New Works and commissions include collaborations with Campo Santo, Centre Theatre Group, and solo performer Roger Guenveur Smith. Their videos, short films, and art exhibits have been shown at The Smithsonian, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Sundance Film Festival, The San Juan, Puerto Rico Film and Video Festival, The Art Institute of Boston, The Palm Springs Film Festival, and The Los Angeles Film Festival, among others.

RICHARD WESLEY  was born in Newark, New Jersey and graduated from Howard University, where he studied playwriting under the tutelage of Owen Dodson and Ted Shine. He was a member of Harlem’s New Lafayette Theater for four exciting years, serving as Managing Editor of Black Theater, the company’s in-house publication. Wesley further perfected his writing skill as a member of the New Lafayette’s Black Theater Workshop, which was headed by Ed Bullins, at the time the, Playwright-in-Residence at the New Lafayette. Mr. Wesley is a five time winner of the AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Playwriting (Strike Heaven on the Face (1974), The Sirens (1976), The Mighty Gents (1977) and The Talented Tenth (1999.) He was the screenwriter for the films, Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Let’s Do It Again (1975), both winners of the NAACP Image Award for Best Picture. Two scripts for which he was the co-writer, Showtime Networks’ Mandela and DeKlerk (1998) and Deacons for Defense (2002) were also nominated for Image Awards. Deacons for Defense received a Black Reels Best Script/Motion Pictures for Television Award in 2004. In recent years, Mr. Wesley has begun an affiliation with the Trilogy Opera Company in his hometown and has written for three librettos for TOC: Papa Doc, with the composer, Dorothy Rudd Moore; FIVE, an opera about the Central Park Five, with composer, Anthony Davis; and Kenyatta, an opera based on the first democratically elected president of the new nation of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, written with the composer, Trent Johnson. Mr. Wesley’s newest play, Autumn, recently completed runs at the Crossroads Theater in New Jersey, and previously ran at the Kumble Theater in Brooklyn in 2015 and 2016, produced by the Billie Holiday Theater. Autumn received its first public performance via a reading produced by Woodie King, Jr at Harlem’s National Black Theater in 2013. Mr. Wesley is currently an Associate Professor in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He is a former Vice President of the Writers Guild of America, East, Inc., and currently sits on the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the Selection Committee for the Black Film Festival of the Newark Museum, the Board of Directors, Newark Performing Arts Corporation at Symphony Hall and is an Advisor for the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers University in Brooklyn, NY. He is married to the novelist, Valerie Wilson Wesley.

CARLOS MORTON has over one hundred theatrical productions, both in the U.S. and abroad.  His professional credits include the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Denver Center Theatre, La Companía Nacional de México, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, and the Arizona Theatre Company. He is the author of The Many Deaths of Danny Rosales and Other Plays (1983), Johnny Tenorio and Other Plays (1992), The Fickle Finger of Lady Death (1996), Rancho Hollywood y otras obras del teatro chicano, (1999), Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda (2004), and Children of the Sun: Scenes for Latino Youth (2008). A former Mina Shaughnessy Scholar and Fulbright Lecturer to Mexico and Poland, Morton holds an M.F.A. in Drama from the  University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Texas at Austin. Morton has lived on the border between Mexico and the United States since 1981, teaching at universities in Texas, California and Mexico. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Theater at the University of California, Santa Barbara.