Book Awards
Theatre Library Association sponsors two prestigious book awards:
The TLA Book Awards recognize exceptional scholarship in published form that has utilized the resources of academic, research and public libraries for works published during the previous calendar year. The winners are announced in late June, and will be honored at a ceremony in New York CIty on October 12, 2012. A cash prize accompanies each award.
Authors, publishers, and members of Theatre Library Association are invited to submit nominations for these awards. Nominations for books published in 2011 are being accepted NOW. Please review the Eligibility and Submission Criteria and contact Flordalisa Lopez and Cynthia Tobar to submit a nomination. The deadline for nominations is April 5, 2012.
Eligibility and Submissions Criteria
The George Freedley Memorial Award
The George Freedley Memorial Award was established in 1968 in honor of the first Curator of the New York Public Library’s Theatre Collection and first President of Theatre Library Association. The Award is presented annually to an English-language book of exceptional scholarship published or distributed in the United States during the previous calendar year that examines some aspect of live theatre or performance. The jurors may also designate an additional title for a Special Jury Prize.
2011 Freedley Award Winner
James Shapiro. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Underlying the arguments over whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays are fundamental questions about literary genius, specifically about the relationship of life and art. Are the plays (and poems) of Shakespeare a sort of hidden autobiography? Do Hamlet, Macbeth, and the other great plays somehow reveal who wrote them? James Shapiro is the first Shakespeare scholar to examine the authorship controversy and its history in this way, explaining what it means, why it matters, and how it has persisted despite abundant evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to him.
2011 Special Jury Prize Winner
Stephen Sondheim. Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. Knopf, 2010.
Stephen Sondheim has won seven Tony Awards, an Academy Award, seven Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Kennedy Center Honors. His career has spanned more than half a century, his lyrics have become synonymous with musical theater and popular culture, and in Finishing the Hat—titled after perhaps his most autobiographical song, from Sunday in the Park with George—Sondheim has not only collected his lyrics for the first time, he has given readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions.
2011 Finalists
Milly S. Barranger. A Gambler’s Instinct: The Story of Broadway Producer Cheryl Crawford. Southern Illinois University Press, 2010.
Andrew Davis. America’s Longest Run: A History of the Walnut Street Theatre. Keystone, 2010.
Constance Valis Hill. Tap Dancing America. Oxford, 2010.
Felicity Nussbaum. Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance and the Eighteenth-Century British Theater. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
David Roberts. Thomas Betterton: The Greatest Actor of the Restoration Stage. Cambridge, 2010.
Gillian M. Rodger. Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century. University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Sjeng Scheijen. Diaghilev: A Life. Oxford, 2010.
Larry Stempel. Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater. W.W. Norton, 2010.
2011 Freedley Award Jury: Charlotte Cubbage, Northwestern University; Robert Melton, University of California, San Diego; Don B. Wilmeth, Brown University; Brook Stowe, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus (Chair)
Freedley Award Winners, 1969-Present
Freedley Award Finalists, 2001-Present
The Richard Wall Memorial Award
The Richard Wall Memorial Award, established in 1973, honors an English-language book of exceptional scholarship in the field of recorded performance published or distributed in the United States during the previous calendar year. The jurors may also designate an additional title for a Special Jury Prize. Formerly known as the Theatre Library Association Award, the prize was renamed in 2010 to honor the memory of the late Richard Wall, longtime TLA member and Book Awards Chair.
2011 Wall Award Winner
Scott Eyman. Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille. Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Best known as the director of such spectacular films as The Ten Commandments and King of Kings, Cecil B. DeMille lived a life as epic as any of his cinematic masterpieces. DeMille was one of the few silent-era directors who made a completely successful transition to sound. In the 1930s and 1940s, DeMille became a household name thanks to the Lux Radio Theater, which he hosted. But after falling out with the union, he gave up the program, and his politics shifted to the right as he championed loyalty oaths and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts. Scott Eyman’s superbly researched biography draws on a massive cache of DeMille family papers not available to previous biographers.
2011 Special Jury Prize Winner
Yunte Huang. Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History. W.W. Norton, 2010.
This provocative first biography of Charlie Chan presents American history in a way that it has never been told before. Yunte Huang ingeniously traces Charlie Chan from his real beginnings as a bullwhip-wielding detective in territorial Hawaii to his reinvention as a literary sleuth and Hollywood film icon. Huang finally resurrects the “honorable detective” from the graveyard of detested postmodern symbols and reclaims him as the embodiment of America’s rich cultural diversity.
2011 Finalists
Dennis Bingham. Whose Lives Are They, Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre. Rutgers University Press, 2010.
Gary Giddins. Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema. W.W. Norton, 2010.
Sam Irvin. Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise. Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Amy Lawrence. The Passion of Montgomery Clift. University of California Press, 2010.
Tony Pipolo. Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film. Oxford, 2010.
Steven Price. The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Heide Schlüpmann. The Uncanny Gaze: The Drama of Early German Cinema. Translated by Inga Pollman. University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Matthew Solomon. Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century. University of Illinois Press, 2010.
2011 Wall Award Jury: John Calhoun, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Madeline Matz, The Library of Congress; Stephen Tropiano, Ithaca College; Brook Stowe, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus (Chair)
Wall Award Winners, 1974-Present
Wall Award Finalists, 2001-Present
Last updated: December 18, 2011