Gloria Oladipo.
NEW YORK: New York-based critic and journalist Gloria Oladipo obtained the second annual Edward Medina Prize for Excellence in Cultural Criticism final weekend from the American Theatre Critics Affiliation (ATCA) at its November 2023 convention in New York.
ATCA created the award final yr to honor their late colleague and to acknowledge United States theatre critics and journalists from traditionally underrepresented teams who write about theatre and its position in reflecting individuals from varied cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. The prize can be meant to encourage elevated readership of cultural criticism by numerous writers and critics from underrepresented teams.
Oladipo, a New York-based journalist and playwright who hails initially from Chicago, has had work printed in Teen Vogue, The Guardian, Bitch Media, and different publications. She was a 2022 Nationwide Critics Institute fellow on the Eugene O’Neill Theater Middle, a possibility she was chosen for by way of the Kennedy Middle American School Theatre Pageant Institute for Theatre Journalism and Advocacy. As a dramatist, she typically writes black comedies about Black ladies that discover themes of caregiving, psychological well being, and trauma utilizing a mixture of realism and absurdism. She is a 2023-2025 Public Theater Rising Writers Group Fellow, a 2022-2023 Dramatists Guild Basis Fellow, and a 2023 Seven Devils Playwrights Convention resident.
At Sunday’s presentation, Oladipo mentioned her strategy to theatre criticism and her work as a playwright with the 2022 Medina Prize winner Brittani Samuel. As a part of the Medina Prize, Oladipo obtained a money award, a complimentary annual ATCA membership, and a stipend that offset prices to attend the latest 2023 ATCA convention in New York Metropolis. The prize was made doable partially by the generosity of Allied Media Initiatives’ Critically Minded mission and the Basis of the American Critics Affiliation.
“Gloria Oladipo is a fully phenomenal, well-varied journalist and critic, and we’re thrilled she has been chosen by our esteemed jury to obtain the second annual Edward Medina Prize,” mentioned ATCA chair David John Chávez in an announcement. “Within the spirit of our beloved pal Ed and his legacy, Gloria has confirmed to be a luminary in our business, displaying the required tenets of journalism with integrity and talent.”
For The Guardian, Oladipo largely covers breaking information, however she additionally writes about arts and tradition.
“Whereas information writing actually desires you to reside within the black and white, I believe that arts writing and playwriting are actually in regards to the grey,” mentioned Oladipo in an announcement. “I discover myself making an attempt to embrace the grey extra and advocating to reside within the grey as information writers when everybody desires a headline that claims X equals Y, exclamation level.”
The judges who reviewed purposes included Mashaun Simon, advertising and public relations supervisor on the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta; Mirla Criste, performer and professor; Claudia Alick, founder and director of Calling Up Justice; Wei Huan Chen, journalist; Lydia Forte, director and professor of theatre at Emory College; Russell Jones III, actor and Ensemble Studio Theatre board member; Alex Meda, director of engagement for the Nationwide New Play Community; and Yura Sapi, founding father of Advancing Arts Ahead.
Based in 1974, the American Theatre Critics Affiliation is the one nationwide affiliation {of professional} theatre critics in america. ATCA works to foster higher communication amongst theatre critics; present coaching and networking alternatives and packages to foster rising writers; advocate for freedom of expression; preserve moral requirements; reply to the continued evolution of the occupation; and enhance public consciousness of theatre criticism as an necessary nationwide useful resource.
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