Hermitage Major Theatre Award winner thrives on collaborative process

A theater maker committed to creating new work in a collaborative process to push for radical change through her art is the second recipient of the new Hermitage Major Theatre Award.

Shariffa Ali, who was born in Kenya, raised in South Africa, and now lives in New York City, will receive a $35,000 commission to create a new work that will have its first presentation in a major theater center late next year.

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New theater prize: Hermitage Artist Retreat announces Major Theater Award for new plays

First winner: Playwright and filmmaker Radha Blank wins first $35,000 Hermitage Major Theater Award

The new commissioning program was announced last June and is the result of an $800,000 gift made by local philanthropist Flora Major and the Kutya Major Foundation. The money is intended to fund the prize for several years and to provide other support for the Hermitage Artist Retreat on Manasota Key.

Ali was chosen from among four theater artists selected as finalists by a prominent jury that includes two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (who is also nominated for two Tony Awards this season), Pulitzer Prize winner David Henry Hwang and critically acclaimed playwright and actress Regina Taylor.

“When I saw who the jury was, I literally could have fainted. I still don’t even know what I said in that interview to have this happen,” Ali said in an interview prior to the official announcement Wednesday evening at a private home.

Ali describes herself as a theater maker, filmmaker, writer and director. She is also an academic who has taught at New York University, Yale University and Princeton University.

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The other finalists are Vanessa German, described as a “self-taught citizen artist, working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation and photography”; two-time Obie Award-winning artist Jonathan McCrory, the executive artistic director at the National Black Theatre; and José Rivera, another Obie-winner known for such plays as “Marisol” and “Boleros for the Disenchanted.”

“They are all brilliant, each one had amazing proposals,” Taylor said. “Shariffa is in that bright light category and she is still emerging in terms of people getting to know this body of work. Each piece that she does in different mediums, whether that’s stage or film, is very remarkable, memorable and challenging.”

Ali said she proposed creating a show from the bottom up in a collaborative process that she learned in South Africa.

“We make stories in the room from the group, building stories from a devised theater method,” she said.

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She plans to create a piece about the life experiences of South African jazz musician and singer Vuyo Sotashe, a Fulbright recipient, that touches on gender identity, patriarchy, community, and sexuality.

“She spoke eloquently and passionately about how she wanted to create a safe space to tell this complicated story, delving back into her own cultural experience, and a story about a very small community to a much larger stage,” Nottage said.

Ali said the award is a game-changer.

“This award is huge. It can alter the course of my life. I’m being put in a position as an artist where you get the opportunity to dream and imagine and plan and put steps into motion. That’s a privilege as artists we don’t usually get,” she said. “In New York, I’m constantly thinking about how am I going to make the rent. I don’t get to tap into the higher thought of creativity.”

The award comes with time to work on her project at the Hermitage, which provides a temporary home in a Gulf-front historic cottage for a variety of artists to create.

The Hermitage Major Theatre Award is one of two significant commissioning prizes administered by the Hermitage. It also presents the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, a $30,000 award that rotates annually among visual artists, musicians and playwrights.

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Major and the Hermitage announced the award in June 2021, setting in motion a fast track to the first three commissions. Radha Blank, a filmmaker, was announced as the first recipient in December.

CEO and Artistic Director Andy Sandberg said the third recipient will be announced in the fall, and that winner will have two years to create a new piece. The award organizers are working to partner with a variety of theaters in places like New York, Chicago and London to present the initial productions of the new works. He said there may be opportunities for Sarasota-area theater lovers to see or hear excerpts of the new pieces during the development process.

Building theater in a collaborative style is “what I was trained to do. This is how we make theater in South Africa,” Ali said. She came to the United States in 2013 for what she thought would be two weeks. At first, she felt “deeply insecure” about making theater in this country. “Someone to the right is this Yale-trained director, and to my left is a Columbia-trained playwright.”

She said her proposed show is born of the struggle of the Apartheid-era in South Africa, which kept ethnicities separate.

“The virtue of this art form brings disparate and different groups together. It doesn’t hinge on the written word. It's from the human body,” she said. “I think what I’ve found in my time in the United States is to try to resist any template. Theater companies have templates for how a show is produced. I always seek opportunities for collaborations and institutions that put the group ahead of the individual.”

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: $35,000 Hermitage Major Theatre Award goes to African Shariffa Ali