August 28, 2016 — Winners of the 2016 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Awards were announced by festival Producing Artistic Director Elena K. Holy during a brief ceremony at drom in New York. As selected by an independent panel of over 30 theater professionals, the winners are as follows:

Overall Play: “Pucker Up and Blow;” “The Radicalization of Rolfe;” and “Black Magic”

Overall Musical: “Mother Emanuel”

Direction: Kristin Skye Hoffmann – “Dream Ticket;” Leslie Kincaid Burby – “Zamboni;” and Jessi D. Hill – “Brewed”

Ensemble: “The Gorges Motel;” “Colorblind’d;” “The Further Adventures of…;” and “ChipandGus”

Solo Performance: “The Box Show;” “Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan;” “At The Flash;” “Pryor Truth;” and “Rent Control”

Playwrighting: Kevin R. Free – “Night of the Living N-Word!!;” Dahn Hiuni – “Murmurs & Incantations;” Meghan Gambling – “Bonnie’s Future Sisters;” and Louis Aquiler & Chris D’Amato – “Dementia Americana”

Acting: Taylor Turner – “The Illusory Adventures of a Dreamer;” Nadia Brown – “Hysterical!;” Meg Kelly – “Kerrmoor;” and Dave Droxler – “Walken on Sunshine”

Choreography: Tom Gold – “Joey Variations”

Scenic Design: Jason Lee Courson – “Cyrano: a love letter to a friendship”

Music/Lyrics: Aaron Michael Krueger – “Super!”

Music Composition: Matthew Lowy – “Fallen Skies”and Ben Singer – “At the Crossroads: Music for Faust”

TheaterMania Audience Favorite: “Walken on Sunshine”

FringeNYC is a production of The Present Company, under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Elena K. Holy. In 1997, New York City became the seventh US city to host a fringe festival, joining Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Houston, Orlando and San Francisco. FringeNYC has presented over 3000 performing groups representing every continent, prompting Switzerland’s national daily, The New Zurich Zeitung, to declare FringeNYC as “the premiere meeting ground for alternative artists.” FringeNYC has also been the launching pad for numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway transfers, long-running downtown hits, and regional theater productions including Urinetown, Matt & Ben, Never Swim Alone, Jammer, Debbie Does Dallas, Dog Sees God, Brandon Teena, Dixie’s Tupperware Party, 21 Dog Years, The Twentieth Century Way, Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer, The Irish Curse, Jurassic Parq, The Fartiste, and Silence! The Musical; movies including WTC View and Armless; and even a TV show (‘da Kink in My Hair). FringeNYC alumni include Bradley Cooper, Melissa Rauch (Big Bang Theory), Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me, CNN’s Inside Man), Mindy Kaling, Tony Award winner Diane Paulus (Pippin), Leigh Silverman (Violet), W. Kamau Bell (Totally Biased), Michael Urie (Ugly Betty), David Anders (iZombie) and Kristen Schall (Last Man on Earth), among countless other success stories.