[Capdist-announce] PRESS RELEASE: Berkshire Theatre Awards to Celebrate Winners November 13

[Gail Burns]

November 7, 2016

Contact: Larry Murray

www.BerkshireOnStage.com

Larrymurray1 at gmail.com

413-664-6108

Photos available upon request

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Berkshire Theatre Awards to Celebrate Winners November 13 in Pittsfield

Winner of the Larry Murray Award to be Announced

Berkshire County, MA [November 7, 2016] – The winners of the First Annual
Berkshire Theatre Awards - already being nicknamed “The Berkies” - will
gather at 5 pm on Sunday, November 13, 2016  at Mr. Finn's Cabaret in
Pittsfield. Along with members of the Berkshire Theatre Critics
Association, they will raise to glass of bubbly in celebration of the
exciting 2016 theatre season nearing its conclusion, and the genesis of
these awards in recognition of its importance to the community and economy
of the region.

Headlining the evening’s entertainment are Elizabeth Aspenlieder and Debra
Jo Rupp, award-winning actors who also make their homes here in the
Berkshires. Hosts for the ceremony are J. Peter Bergman from The Berkshire
Edge and Macey Levin from Berkshire on Stage, members of the Founders’
Committee..

The event has drawn the Berkshires’ theatrical community together in a show
of support that is rare for the off-season.  Making an appearance are the
four major Berkshire theatre companies, and the half-dozen smaller troupes
who contribute so much to our year-round cultural life. Among the winners
who will claim their awards are Julianne Boyd, Nehassaiu deGannes, Chris
Demos-Brown, Jess Goldstein, Dana Harrison, Debra Jo Rupp, Tamara Tunie,
and Andre Ware.

The winners were announced in October, but one, the "Larry Murray Award,"
named for the founder of the awards program and given to a person or
theatre project that advances social, political, or community issues, will
not be announced until the evening of the event itself. In the running
are Julianne
Boyd, Artistic Director of Barrington Stage, and Kristen van Ginhoven,
Co-founder and Artistic Director of WAM Theatre; and the three Vermont
theatre companies that teamed up to produce all three plays in Alan
Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests this past summer – the Dorset Theatre
Festival, Northern Stage Company, and the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company.

Larry Murray has long promoted the idea of a Berkshire Theatre Awards
program. Now that it is a reality, he will personally present a special
award in his name. Murray, now 67, has worked in the arts and cultural
fields for much of his life, and been the editor and publisher of
BerkshireOnStage.com since 2010. Prior to that he did promotion and
marketing for Warner Brothers, Universal International Films, The Pocket
Mime Theatre, Boston Ballet, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was a
founder of Arts Boston and headed that city's Midtown Cultural District
Task Force, a community based planning group that shaped zoning to
encourage developers to carve out new theater spaces for smaller resident
companies as part of their mixed use projects. That zoning passed in 1990
and changed Boston from one that was known as a pre-Broadway tryout city to
one that nurtured dozens of its own local companies, employing resident
actors, directors and writers.

Murray was also recruited in the mid-1980's by legendary critic and PBS
television host Elliot Norton to help create the Elliot Norton Awards,
which continue to this day.

Helping Murray create the Berkshire Theatre Awards and hosting the event
are members of the Founders’ Committee: J. Peter Bergman, Robert Bruyr,
Gail M. Burns, Macey Levin, Gloria Miller, and Ed Sedarbaum. Other voting
members of the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association include: Mark G.
Auerbach, Jeffrey Borak, Dan Dwyer, Helen Epstein, Bob Goepfert, Charles
Giuliano, Rex Hearn, Chris Rohmann, Fred Sokol,  Stephen Sorokoff, Robert
Sugarman, and Sally Sugarman.

###

-- 
Gail M. Burns
57 Linden Street
Williamstown, MA 01267-2511
413-458-4246 home
413-212-8923 cell
gburns35 at gmail.com <gailmburns at roadrunner.com>
Reviews at BerkshireOnStage.com
<http://www.GailSez.org>
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