USITT’s 2010 Golden Pen Award winning book was the basis of a special Blockbuster session at the Annual Conference & Stage Expo in Kansas City, Missouri last April, where the awards were presented. Nominations are now open for the 2011 award.

Photo/Tom Thatcher

Martha Marking
Golden Pen Awards Committee

All USITT members are eligible to nominate books for the USITT Golden Pen Award, which honors an outstanding publication in the field of design and production for the performing arts. Books are eligible for a three-year period from the date of publication. Nominations do not automatically carry over from one year to the next, but it is possible for a book to be nominated more than once.

Nominations for the 2011 Golden Pen Award are being accepted until September 15, 2010. Members can easily nominate a book by using the form here. Anyone with questions about this process may contact a member of the Golden Pen subcommittee of USITT Publications: Martha Marking, markngma@appstate.edu; Mike Monsos, michael.monsos@umontana.edu; Rich Dunham rdunham@arches.uga.edu, or Lance Brockman, brock001@tc.umn.edu.

The winning work should make a significant contribution to the field of theatre design and technology as an outstanding example of one or more of the following:

• scholarly research and critical thinking;
• presentation of the work and methodology of exceptional practitioners of theatrical arts and/or crafts; or
• description of the methods, skills and technology involved in creating works of theatre and/or crafts.

In the application, available online, nominators should address how the specific book fulfills one or more of these criteria.

The most recent Golden Pen Award recipients are Oscar Brockett, Margaret Mitchell, and Linda Hardberger, for Making the Scene: A History of Stage Design and Technology in Europe and the United States in 2010. A complete list of all USITT Golden Pen winners can be found here.

The Publications Committee forwards its recommendations of potential award winners to the full Board of Directors. Books that receive the USITT Golden Pen Award are added to the USITT Bookstore, where USITT members receive a discount on purchases. Award recipients are invited to the USITT Annual Conference where members can meet the author(s) and have their purchased copy of the books personally inscribed.

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