DCT NEWS 2009
Diverse City Theater Earns Second Consecutive Nomination for Actors' Equity Association's
Prestigious Rosetta Lenoire Award

NEW YORK--Diverse City Theater Company (DCT) earned its second consecutive nomination for the prestigious Rosetta Lenoire Award.  The award recognizes theater companies across the country for their “outstanding contributions made to the universality of the human experience in the American theatre.”  DCT is a non-profit 501(c)(3) theater developing and producing organization based in New York.

Given annually by Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), the professional union of American stage actors and stage managers, the award was named in honor of the actor Rosetta LeNoire for her theater accomplishments and her work with the AEA's Ethnic Minorities Committee (now called Equal Employment Opportunity Committee or EEOC), dedicated to maintaining an "interracial company" of actors. 

On DCT’s nomination, Christine Toy Johnson, Co-Chair/Eastern Region of AEA’s EEOC, commented:  “Diverse City Theater Company truly demonstrates its commitment to non-traditional casting illuminating the universality of the human spirit through the theatre.  The Company elegantly embraces the “issue driven” plays that reflect the true diversity of our society, not only with their inclusive casting, but with their truly inclusive (and very rare) programming.”

She added:  “It is no longer sufficient to just wish for non-traditional casting.  We must be staunch advocates for diverse and inclusive programming as well.  Diverse City Theater is a leader in this quest.” 

Victor Lirio, Artistic Director of DCT, said:  “We are honored, once again, for this prestigious nomination.  Like Ms. Lenoire, we believe that the theater is a profound and powerful venue and the best place to examine the universality of the human condition.  Diverse City Theater Company’s mission is to explore this truth; to develop theater that examines a deeper understanding of this universality; and to tell provocative and compelling stories that are too often absent in the theater today.” 

Actors Equity Association will present the award at the Equity Annual Membership Meeting in April 2009.  For more information about the award, please contact Tom Miller, Director of Outreach and Education, 212.869.8530 x 424 or by e-mail at tmiller@actorsequity.org.

About Diverse City Theater Company

Diverse City Theater Company (“DCT”) develops and produces powerful and thought-provoking works that explore and examine our society’s diversity issues from social, cultural, gender and demographic perspectives; creates multiculturally fluent theater audiences; and advocates the non-traditional casting of actors to reflect the rich spectrum of our national culture and universality of the human spirit. DCT is an independent, non-profit 501(c)(3) theater organization based in New York.

For more information, visit the organization's website at www.diversecitytheater.org.