Wakka Wakka Productions is a non-profit New York theatre company founded in 2001. [1] In 2011 the company won an Obie Award [2] and in 2013 a Drama Desk Special Award. [3] Productions have included The Death of Little Ibsen and SAGA .
The Drama Desk Award is an annual prize recognizing excellence in New York theatre. First bestowed in 1955 as the Vernon Rice Award, the prize initially honored Off-Broadway productions, as well as Off-off-Broadway, and those in the vicinity. Following the 1964 renaming as the Drama Desk Awards, Broadway productions were included beginning with the 1968–69 award season. The awards are considered a significant American theater distinction.
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given since 1956 by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups involved in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. Starting just after the 2014 ceremony, the American Theatre Wing is joint presenter and administrative manager of the Obie Awards. The Obie Awards are considered off-Broadway's highest honor, similar to the Tony Awards for Broadway productions.
Will Eno is an American playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. His play, Thom Pain was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2005. His play The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it received a Drama Desk Special Award and was named Best Play on Broadway by USA Today, and best American play of 2014 by The Guardian. His play The Open House was presented Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in 2014 and won the Obie Award for Playwriting as well as other awards, and was on both TIME Magazine and Time Out New York 's Top Ten Plays of 2014.
Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson, is an American composer and musical arranger best known for her work in the theater. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and six Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo. She was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
Jerry Zaks is an American stage and television director, and actor. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Drama Desk Award for directing The House of Blue Leaves, Lend Me a Tenor, and Six Degrees of Separation and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Guys and Dolls.
A. J. Antoon was an American theatre director. He attended the Yale School of Drama. Beginning in 1971, Antoon directed numerous plays at the New York Shakespeare Festival over a period of nearly 20 years. In 1973, Antoon became one of the few directors to have been nominated for two Tony Awards in the same category in the same year. In addition to winning the Tony Award with one of his nominations, Antoon was also the winner of a Drama Desk Award, a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and an Obie Award. His career lasted until 1991; he died less than a year later from AIDS-related lymphoma.
Santino Fontana is an American actor and singer best known for his work in plays and musicals. He began his career in 2007 and soon gained wide acclaim for his leading performances on Broadway and Off-Broadway. He has received a Tony Award, two Drama Desk Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award, Obie Award, and Clarence Derwent Award. In 2019, Fontana won the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his lead performance as Michael Dorsey in the stage adaptation of Tootsie.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson is an American actor, playwright, and director who has won national awards for his work in all three categories. He is best known for his role of Captain Roy Montgomery from 2009 to 2011 on ABC's Castle. In November 2011 he appeared on Broadway in Lydia R. Diamond's play Stick Fly. In 2013 he starred in the TV series Low Winter Sun, a police drama set in Detroit.
Derek McLane is an American set designer for theatre, opera, and television. He graduated with a BA from Harvard College and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.
Alex Timbers is an American writer and director and the recipient of Tony, Golden Globe, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and London Evening Standard Awards, as well as two OBIE and Lucile Lortel Awards. He also received the 2019 Drama League Founder's Award for Excellence in Directing and the 2016 Jerome Robbins Award for Directing. He was nominated for a 2020 Grammy Award. For his work on Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Timbers won a 2021 Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical.
Linda Marie Emond is an American stage, film, and television actress. Emond has received three Tony Award nominations for her performances in Life (x) 3 (2003), Death of a Salesman (2012), and Cabaret (2014).
John Lee Beatty is an American scenic designer who has created set designs for more than 115 Broadway shows and has designed for other productions. He won two Tony Awards, for Talley's Folly (1980) and The Nance (2013), was nominated for 13 more, and he won five Drama Desk Awards and was nominated for 10 others.
Signature Theatre Company is an American theatre based in Manhattan, New York. It was founded in 1991 by James Houghton and is now led by Artistic Director Paige Evans. Signature is known for their season-long focus on one artist's work. It has been located in the Pershing Square Signature Center since 2012.
John Douglas Thompson is an English-American actor. He is a Tony Award nominee and the recipient of two Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and a Lucille Lortel Award.
John Richard Tiffany is an English theatre director. He directed the internationally successful productions Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Black Watch and Once. He has won 2 Tony Awards, an Olivier Award, a Drama Desk Award and an Obie Award.
Pam MacKinnon is an American theatre director. She has directed for the stage Off-Broadway, on Broadway and in regional theatre. She won the Obie Award for Directing and received a Tony Award nomination, Best Director, for her work on Clybourne Park. In 2013 she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California on January 23, 2018.
Kenneth Todd Freeman is an American actor. He has been nominated for two Tony Awards over the course of his career and has won one Drama Desk Award. He has played supporting roles in films such as Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) and The Cider House Rules (1999), played a prominent recurring role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1998–1999), and was a series regular on A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–2019).
SAGA is a play written and directed by Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock, performed by Wakka Wakka Productions in collaboration with Nordland Visual Theatre. According to Wakka Wakka's website, SAGA features 30 puppets, ranging from 3 inches to 10 feet, portrayed by an international cast of puppeteers from Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and the US'.
Samuel D. Hunter is an American playwright living in New York City.