Awards are a natural part of any ATCA conference

Awards are a natural part of any ATCA conference

At the ATCA/O’Neill conference “All Campus” panel on “The Theater Looks at Critics,” July 17, featuring an actor, director, designer, non-critic journalist, two producers and two playwrights (see below * for list; click here for a few excerpts), moderated by O’Neill managing director Preston Whiteway.

ATCA started the proceedings by presenting an award and a check. Barbara Bannon, chair of the Primus Prize committee, presented a plaque to the 2009 winner, Jamie Pachino, who had long since received the $10,000 check made possible by the generosity of the Francesca Primus Foundation. The 2010 Primus winner, Michele Lowe, will received her plaque at a future conference.

Then Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, president of Foundation ATCA, presented an $1,800 scholarship check to Dan Sullivan, head of the National Critics Institute — who immediately passed it on to Whiteway. Jenkins also distributed to this year’s NCI fellows copies of Under the Copper Beech: Conversations with American Theater Critics, which he edited, published by the Foundation in 2004. It’s a reminder that we all work in the great critical tradition nurtured by Elliot Norton, Henry Hewes, Ernest Schier and others.

In the background sat the ATCA bench, presented in 2004 to mark the 30th anniversay of ATCA’s founding at the O’Neill in 1974.

(* “The Theater Looks at Critics” panel: actor Peter Jay Fernandez; director Wendy Goldberg [also NCI Artistic Director); designer Rachel Hauck; journalist Patrick Healey; producers Tom Viertel [also chair, O’Neill board] and Steven Hendel [Fela]; and playwrights Jamie Pachino and Adam Rapp.)