Stage Directors And Choreographers Foundation Announces Awardees And Finalist For The Abe Burrows Award

Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF), the not-for-profit foundation of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), has announced the recipients of this year's Abe Burrows Award for Assistant Directors.

Established by the James and Deborah Burrows Foundation and supported by a generous matching contribution from Thomas Kail, the award will be given to two early-career directors, Mack Brown and Tai Thompson, each of whom will receive an unrestricted $10,000 award. The committee also selected Katie Young as this year's finalist. The Abe Burrows Award is given annually to a director or director/choreographer who is working as an assistant director. The award will allow both recipients to fully focus on their work as an assistant director to an SDC Member between August 2025 and December 2026.

The award honors Abe Burrows, a Tony Award-winning director who cared deeply about fostering and supporting the next generation of directors. As a director and writer, Burrows is known for his work on How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, for which he won Tony Awards for Best Director, Best Book, and Best Musical, as well as the Pulitzer Prize with his collaborator Frank Loesser.  His additional Broadway credits include Guys and Dolls and Can-Can.

You can read more about the awardee and finalists here: https://sdcfoundation.org/2025-abe-burrows-award-for-assistant-directors-recipients/

About the awardees:

Mack Brown is a Brooklyn-based butch. They build precise new musicals, plays that challenge our collective moral compass, and theatre that is trans-genre and transsexual. Recent: Watchdog (Ars Nova/ANTFest), marked green at birth, marked female at birth (Fault Line Theatre), The Interrobangers (Theatre[Untitled]), As associate/assistant: Pictures from Home (Broadway), The Big Gay Jamboree (Off-Broadway), I Can Get It for You Wholesale (Classic Stage). Mack was the ‘22-23 Roundabout Directing Fellow and currently serves as Lead Facilitator of the Roundabout Directors Group. They are an NYCLU Artist Ambassador, NYU Tisch Drama Gender Expansive Mentor, and work at Convergence Magazine with grassroots organizers and activists to produce media that sharpens our collective practice. Proud SDC Member. mack-brown.com

Tai Thompson is a NYC-based multidisciplinary artist specializing in new works and immersive theater. She has directed large-scale immersive theatrical productions throughout the US- notably the critically acclaimed series, Miami Motel Stories. Selected work: Love's Labour's Lost (Two River), Dark Star from Harlem (La Mama- 2020 AUDELCO for Best Direction of a Musical), Men on Boats (NYU/Atlantic), A Chance for Redemption (Orlando Shakes), Breathe (NPT), Warriors (TheatreWorks), Moon Man Walk (FSU), The Democracy Project (Federal Hall), Long Distance Affair (PopUp Theatrics/ Juggerknot- 2021 Miami New Times Best Play Award), Miami Bus Stop Stories (2020 Knight Foundation New Work Award). She was a 2018 SDCF Observer, 2018 Inaugural NAMT Observer, 2019 Drama League Classical Directing Fellow, 2022 Old Globe Classical Theatre Fellow, and 2023 Fulbright Award Finalist for South Korea. Also a playwright, her works include an adaptation of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, Kleonostium, Not Quite Ripe, Pressures, and Lucky.

About the finalist:

Katie Young (she/her) is a New York-based director & stage manager with a passion for labor organizing and animals. As a director, she enjoys plays that activate our bodies and spirits within space. Katie has directed world-premiere productions including Back and Forth by Richard Hollman (Super Secret Arts), VODVIL: A Classically Modern Magic Show with magician Andrew Evans (The Magic Patio), Paradise Lost and Found by Tirosh Schneider (Isle of Shoals Productions), Loyalty by Rob Ackerman (Without a Net Productions), and an all-female production of Julius Caesar set in a girls school with Pocket Universe.  Works-in-development include: Pygmalion, Somebody Should Fix That with Violeta Picayo and Emily Zemba, Untitled Mental Breakdown Play by Jenn Jacobs, and a live-action-Pixar-logo-inspired-puppet play. She was a member of the 2019 LCT Directors Lab. Katie is currently the Associate Director for A Wrinkle in Time, directed by Lee Sunday Evans with music and lyrics by Heather Christian and book by Lauren Yee, at Arena Stage. Her decade plus of work as a stage manager includes collaborations with companies from across New York and the world, including: B'way/Tour: Stereophonic, The King and I, Hamilton, Something Rotten, Once. Off-B'way: St. Ann's Warehouse, Second Stage, Park Avenue Armory, Signature, LCT3, & Waterwell; Events: MET Gala, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Khaite. www.KatieYoungTheater.com

About Abe Burrows

Born December 18, 1910 in New York City, Abe Burrows graduated from New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn and later attended both City College and New York University. His career in radio and television writing began with This Is New York (1938), followed by the Rudy Vallee Program (1940), Duffy's Tavern (1940-1945), and the Abe Burrows' Show (1946-1947). Burrows then turned to writing for the stage. Burrows wrote, doctored, or directed such shows as Guys and Dolls (1950); Make a Wish (1951); Two on the Aisle (1951); Three Wishes for Jamie (1952); Can-Can (1953):  Silk Stockings (1955); Say, Darling (1958); How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961); Cactus Flower (1965); Breakfast at Tiffany's (1966); Forty Carats (1970); Good News (1974 Revival); Four on a Garden (1971): and many others.  With his collaborator Frank Loesser, Burrows won a Pulitzer Prize for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.  In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, he won four Tony Awards.  Burrows died on May 17, 1985.

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 the awareness of the value of directors' and choreographers' work; and to convene around issues affecting theatre artists. www.sdcfoundation.org.