Michel Hausmann '14 Awarded the 2022 Thornton Wilder Prize
Directing alumnus Michel Hausmann ’14 and Miami New Drama were presented the 2022 Thornton Wilder Prize on November 14, 2022 at New York City’s American Academy of Arts and Letters. Hausmann is the Artistic Director and co-founder of Miami New Drama, alongside National Medal of the Arts winner Moises Kaufman.
Hausmann and Miami New Drama were recognized for their work in staging the first multilingual production of Wilder’s Our Town. The production, which included dialogue in Spanish, English, and Haitian Creole, premiered in 2017. The show was at the center of Monday night’s event, as it was featured in an onstage discussion between Hausmann, playwright Sarah Ruhl (Becky Nurse of Salem, The Clean Room), Wilder’s nephew and literary executor Tappan Wilder, and producer and writer Jeremy McCarter (Young Radicals, Hamilton: The Revolution).
The Thornton Wilder Society is dedicated to supporting efforts to expand the literary legacy of Thornton Wilder and encouraging projects that emphasize the importance of drama and literature within world culture. The Thornton Wilder Prize recipient is decided by a vote of the Board of Directors of the Thornton Wilder Society. The Prize carries with it a $1000 honorarium and is awarded periodically. Miami New Drama is a not-for-profit theatre company that believes in the transformative power of theatre and ensures that its work is always in conversation with the unique multicultural and multilingual Miami community. It is the resident company at the historic Colony Theatre in Miami Beach.
Michel Hausmann '14 is a Venezuelan-born theater director, producer, and writer. He is the recipient of the 2021 Drama League Award for Outstanding Interactive or Socially-Distanced Theater for 7 Deadly Sins, which The New York Times cited as the “biggest live professional theater production in the country” during the pandemic. Michel is the book writer and director of The Golem Of Havana, an original musical, which premiered at La Mama in August of 2013, received its world premiere at Barrington Stage Company in July of 2014, and had a critically acclaimed run at The Colony Theatre. Hausmann's Off-Broadway credits include: the New York Premiere of Vassily Sigarev's Black Milk at East 13th Theater and the New York premiere of The Color Of Desire, by Pulitzer Prize winning author Nilo Cruz. In Caracas, Venezuela, Hausmann was the Artistic Director of Palo De Agua, a leading Venezuelan theater company where he directed the world premiere of Los Navegaos, the last play by renowned Venezuelan playwright Isaac Chocrón, as well as critically acclaimed productions of Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar and The Producers. He is a New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellow, an IRNE nominee, a Silver Palm Award winner, a Richard Rodgers Award finalist, and a two-time Knights Arts Challenge Award recipient.