Barbara Whitman '05 To Receive 2025 Tectonic Theatre Award
Tony Award-winning producer and Theatre alum Barbara Whitman '05 is set to receive the James C. Hormel Spirit of Tectonic Award from Tectonic Theatre Project at their annual benefit gala, A Tectonic Cabaret, on Monday October 25, 2025. Adjunct Professor and founding Artistic Director of the Tectonic Theatre Company, Moisés Kaufman, is the artistic director for this night of cabaret performances from Hannah Gadsby, Natalie Venetia Belcon, Erin Morton, and Beth Malone.
“We are deeply honored to celebrate our dear friend Barbara Whitman with the James C. Hormel Spirit of Tectonic Award," Kaufman told Playbill. "Barbara’s visionary producing has helped bring some of the most groundbreaking stories of our time to Broadway, and her commitment to bold, transformative theatre has inspired us all. She has been an extraordinary champion of Tectonic’s work and of artists everywhere, and we are thrilled to recognize her remarkable contributions to the field with this award.”
Founded in 1991, the Tectonic Theater Project is a developmental theatre company that creates and produces works for the stage that rigorously explore theatrical language and form. Their core values are courage and risk taking, innovation, theatricality, social and political change, and egalitarianism: everyone has a voice in the creation of new work. This methodology has led to some of the most ground-breaking plays of the modern day including The Laramie Project, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and I Am My Own Wife. Proceeds from the benefit gala go towards the company’s education and new work development programs. Tickets and further information about the event can be found on the company’s website.
Whitman is a Tony award-winning producer who made her Broadway debut in 2004, producing A Raisin in the Sun. She produced the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop, which marks the first time a musical produced solely Off Broadway has won the award. Other Broadway credits include Red, 33 Variations, Mary Stuart, Legally Blonde, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Hands on a Hardbody, 1984, Angels In America, Burn This, Fun Home, and Oh Hello.
Moisés Kaufman is a Tony and Emmy-nominated director and playwright who received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2016. Broadway credits include Paradise Square (10 Tony Award nominations), Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo with Robin Williams, The Heiress with Jessica Chastain, 33 Variations with Jane Fonda (wrote and directed, Tony nomination Best Play), and Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (Tony Award). Other productions include: Pulitzer Prize finalist Here There Are Blueberries, Velour: A Drag Spectacular, Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard, and Seven Deadly Sins (Drama Desk Award). He is the co-writer of The Laramie Project and the writer of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. He’s an Obie and Drama Desk award winner and a Guggenheim fellow.