San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Announces 2020 Special Award Recipients

The San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle has announced the recipients of its four Special Awards for 2020. The Special Awards will be presented as part of its 44th Annual Excellence in Theatre Awards Gala to be held on Monday, March 30, 2020 at San Francisco's historic Victoria Theatre. The event will be hosted by popular Bay Area performers Lisa Geduldig with musical entertainment provided by The Lost Trio.

The SFBATCC 2020 Paine Knickerbocker Award for a continuing contribution to Bay Area theatre will be presented to Carla Befera & Company.

Carla Befera has been a Bay Area publicist for over thirty years, providing public relations and marketing services to local, regional, and national touring companies. Her list of Bay Area clients served over the decades is extensive and far-reaching and includes American Conservatory Theatre, Aurora Theatre Company, Beach Blanket Babylon, Lesher Center for the Arts, Marin Theatre Company, The Marsh, and the San Francisco Fringe Festival among many others.

Carla Befera & Company played a key role in bringing attention to the outstanding work being produced at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley that culminated in their Regional Theatre Tony Award in 2019.

The recipient of the SFBATCC 2020 Annette Lust Award - given to a promising new theatrical talent or an organization that has demonstrated early in its existence the potential to have a significant impact on Bay Area theatre - is Indra's Net Theater Co.

Founded in 2012 by Bruce and Alexandra Frappier Coughran, Indra's Net Theater Co.'s mission is to produce and perform plays that deal with science, philosophy and the "big questions", to enrich and expand the theater experience in new ways for our community, and to develop new plays, produce professional-level productions, and produce special events that explore what we know and how we know it.

With outstanding productions of such plays as Delicate Particle Logic, Darwin in Malibu, and the SFBATCC Excellence in Theatre Award-winning A Time for Hawking, Indra's Net Theater is more than succeeding in that mission.

The 2020 SFBATCC Gene Price Award honors a person who embodies superlative professionalism and passion for Bay Area theatre. This year's recipient is Loretta Greco.

After twelve years, Loretta Greco is preparing to end her tenure as artistic director of San Francisco's legendary Magic Theatre. Her time there has been spent passionately fulfilling the Magic Theatre's mission of cultivating bold new plays, playwrights, and audiences while producing and directing works that ask substantive questions about our place in humanity and reflect the rich diversity of the world in which we live.

The 2020 SFBATCC Jerry Friedman Award, given to an individual who has furthered the creativity and growth of theater in the Bay Area throughout their career, will be awarded to Carl Jordan.

Carl Jordan is a freelance, multi-SFBATCC award winning director, choreographer, and designer who has worked with companies throughout the Bay Area for more than thirty years. From his beginning as a professional ballet dancer to his direction of the African-American Shakespeare Company's recent production of Othello, Carl's involvement in a show in any capacity guarantees the level of creativity and innovation that we've come to expect from Bay Area theatre.

His curriculum vitae includes such titles as Clybourne Park, One Man, Two Guvnors, Venus in Fur, Return to the Forbidden Planet, title of show, and Death of a Salesman, a pretty clear indication of the depth and breadth of Jordan's work.

Along with the four special awards, over 60 awards in performance, direction, design and production categories will also be presented at this year's Gala. Those nominations will be announced on February 19, 2020.

The SFBATCC is a private 501(c)(6) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and serving theatres of all types and sizes in the greater region by recognizing excellence and outstanding achievement in the field. Active since 1976, the Circle consists of reviewers covering theatre in all nine Bay Area counties across various media.

For the latest information on the Awards, the Gala, and the Critics Circle, please go to www.sfbatcc.org