Stage Directors And Choreographers Foundation Unveils Recipients Of The 2026 Lynnette Barkley Fund
Selection committee members Marc Bruni, Dominic Moore-Dunson, Lisa Portes, and Maria Torres chose the honorees.
Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the not-for-profit foundation of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), has announced the recipients of the Lynnette Barkley Fund. Created by director and choreographer Lynnette Barkley and administered by SDCF, the fund provides unrestricted financial support to alumni of SDCF's Professional Development Program as they take the next steps in their artistic careers. This year's recipients, Lindsey Hope Pearlman, Diego Alejandro González, and Jaquita Ta'le, will each receive a $5,000 unrestricted award.
Established in 2025, the Lynnette Barkley Fund supports artists whose work demonstrates exceptional promise and a clear vision for advancing their careers. The fund was created to help directors and choreographers pursue passion projects, develop new work, and access opportunities that will elevate their artistic practice. Each year, recipients are selected through a peer review process overseen by the Lynnette Barkley Fund Selection Committee.
This year's selection committee included Marc Bruni, Dominic Moore-Dunson, Lisa Portes, and Maria Torres.
'The Lynnette Barkley Fund is a powerful reminder that artists thrive when support is sustained and continual,' said Laura Peete, Foundation Director of SDCF. 'As a service organization, SDCF is committed to providing directors and choreographers with the resources, community, and advocacy they need to grow, thrive, and build lasting careers.'
You can read more about the recipients here: https://sdcfoundation.org/lynnette-barkley-award
ABOUT THE RECIPIENTS
Diego Alejandro González is a theatermaker and Co-Creator of BORDERLANDS, a theater collective centering nepantla: the in-between space where cultures, identities, histories, and futures collide. Working across musicals, dance, opera, devised theater, and experimental performance, Diego creates interdisciplinary work that serves as a portal for transformation, memory, prophecy, healing, sensuality, and collective futures. Projects currently in development include DAVID & THE APOCALYPSE, a new play about queer artists across timelines; ¡OKLAHOMA!, a Mexican bilingual adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic; Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIEN, a film-to-stage adaptation; and TEJANX., an immersive celebration of queer borderlands communities. Diego is an inaugural Mercury Store Directing Fellow, a member of the Roundabout Directors Group, an SDCF Abe Burrows Award Finalist, an SDCF Shadow on Broadway participant for Hadestown, and a Drama League Assistantship Recipient.
Lindsey Hope Pearlman is a Lecoq-trained director and playwright specializing in physical, image-driven comedic plays and musicals. Original musicals: ROAR! (Exponential Festival), MacGyver the Musical (Co-Book Writer, World Premiere at Stages in Houston, TX). Original plays: Lucy (EST/Sloan Commission), Viv is for Vengeance (American Playwriting Foundation Relentless Award Honorable Mention), Cassandra Complex. Broadway: Bandstand (Assistant Director), Leap of Faith (SDCF Observer). Selected Off-Broadway: The Art Tour (Director, Theater Row), A Sign of the Times (Book writer, New World Stages). Selected Regional: SuperYou (Associate Director, Skylight, Milwaukee WI), The Rocky Horror Show Live! (Strand Theater, Rockland ME). Short films: One Woman Movie, Goat and Placemat. Drama League NY Directing Fellow. Member, Bread Arts Collective. Graduate of London International School of Performing Arts, Hamilton College. Adjunct Professor, Pace University.
Jaquita Ta'le is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and Co-Artistic Director of Bottle Tree Theatre. She made her official directorial debut with I Sell Windows, a solo show incorporating puppetry, produced by Outside In Theatre and presented at the Assembly Festival during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In spring 2026, Jaquita served as an SDCF Directing Observer with director Awoye Timpo on Tarell Alvin McCraney's Windfall at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Her acting credits include The Heal (Getty Villa), Too Heavy for Your Pocket (Sacred Fools, Ovation Award-nominated production), and And Then They Fell (Atwater Village Theatre). Film and television credits include Pinocchio, Good Behavior, Castle, Shameless, and Criminal Minds.
ABOUT Lynnette Barkley
Lynnette Barkley is a director, choreographer, and educator whose work has championed the development of the next generation of theatrical artists. In 2025, she established the Lynnette Barkley Fund at SDCF to provide unrestricted financial support to alumni of SDCF's Professional Development Program. The fund reflects her commitment to ensuring that emerging and early-career directors and choreographers have access to resources that allow them to pursue ambitious artistic goals, create new work, and advance their professional careers.
ABOUT SDCF
Founded in 1965, Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF) celebrates, develops, and supports professional stage directors and choreographers throughout every phase of their careers. SDCF works to build a theatrical community that reflects the cultural, racial, and gender diversity of our nation by creating opportunities for artists of all backgrounds to bring their full, authentic selves to their work as creative leaders in the theatre. SDCF's goals are to provide opportunities to practice the crafts of directing and choreography; to gather and disseminate craft and career information; to promote the profession to emerging talent; to provide opportunities for exchange of knowledge among directors and choreographers; to increase awareness of the value of directors' and choreographers' work; and to convene around issues affecting theatre artists. Visit www.sdcfoundation.org.
Photo Credit: include *The Heal* (Getty Villa), *Too Heavy for Your Pocket*
