Other UNCSA connections to Sunday’s Tony Awards:

·         Other Desert Cities, directed by School of Drama alumnus Joe Mantello (’84), is up for five Tony Awards, including Best Play and Best Scenic Design of a Play (longtime School of Design and Production guest artist John Lee Beatty received that nomination).

·         School of Design and Production alumna Anne S. Kohn ('10) is associate director of administration for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., which will receive the 2012 Regional Theatre Tony Award. Kohn received her master's degree in Performing Arts Management.

·         School of Drama alumnus Paul Whitty ('02) plays Billy (Guitar, Ukulele, Cajon, Snare Drum) in Once, which is nominated for 11 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Orchestrations and Best Sound Design.

·         Scott A. Lehrer, who was sound designer for UNCSA’s spring 2011 all-school musical, Oklahoma!, is nominated for Best Sound Design of a Play for Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

The 2012 Drama Desk Awards, which are often viewed as Tony Award predictors, were announced June 3 in Manhattan.

UNCSA School of Drama alumnus Paul Whitty (see above) is in the cast of Once, which won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical.

Nominated for 2012 Drama Desk Awards were School of Drama alumni Will Rogers (‘04) and Anna Camp (‘04). Rogers was nominated for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Classic Stage Company’s Unnatural Acts. Camp was nominated for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for her Off Broadway/Second Stage performance in All My People.

School of Music alumnus Phillip Boykin (see above) was also nominated for a 2012 Drama Desk Award, for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical.

Other UNCSA connections to the Drama Desk Awards include UNCSA Board of Visitors member William Ivey Long (see above) who was nominated for Outstanding Costume Design for Lucky Guy, and Alan Menken, UNCSA’s 2011 commencement speaker and honorary doctorate recipient, who won in the Outstanding Music category for Newsies The Musical.

The 2012 Lucille Lortel Awards, which were announced last month in New York City, also had several UNCSA connections.

Once, with Drama alumnus Paul Whitty (see above), won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical.

Drama alumnus J.T. Rogers saw his play, Blood and Gifts, nominated for Outstanding Play, while Drama alumnus John Langs saw his production, The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, nominated for Outstanding Musical. The show was directed by Langs with story by Langs, Joy Gregory and Gunnar Madsen.

William Ivey Long (see above) was also nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award, for Outstanding Costume Design for The School for Lies.

The Lucille Lortel Awards are presented by the Off-Broadway League for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway.

J.T. Rogers’ Blood and Gifts (see above) also received a nomination for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play from the Outer Critics Circle Awards, which also were presented last month. (Phillip Boykin and William Ivey Long also received Outer Critics Circle nominations.)

In April, Rogers was announced as a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, which is awarded to men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. There are only about 220 Fellowships awarded each year from up to 4,000 applicants.

Rogers received an honorary doctorate from UNCSA in 2009. 

And also in April, Design and Production alumnus Chris Blaine received a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Sound Design, Resident Production, for his sound design of A Bright New Boise at Washington, D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. The Helen Hayes Awards recognize artistic achievement on Washington’s stages.

As America’s first state-supported arts school, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts is a unique stand-alone public university of arts conservatories. With a high school component, UNCSA is a degree-granting institution that trains young people of talent in music, dance, drama, filmmaking, and design and production. Established by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, the School of the Arts opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

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