SDCF is thrilled to announce the recipients for this year’s Abe Burrows Award for Assistant Directors. Recipients include Mack Brown and Tai Thompson as the awardees, each of whom will receive an unrestricted $10,000 award and Katie Young as the finalist.
Established by the James and Deborah Burrows Foundation and supported by a generous matching contribution from Thomas Kail, the award will be given to two early-career directors, . The Abe Burrows Award is given annually to a director or director/choreographer who is working as an assistant director. The award will allow both recipients to fully focus on their work as an assistant director to an SDC Member between August 2025 and December 2026. The award honors Abe Burrows, a Tony Award-winning director who cared deeply about fostering and supporting the next generation of directors. As a director and writer, Burrows is known for his work on How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, for which he won Tony Awards for Best Director, Best Book, and Best Musical, as well as the Pulitzer Prize with his collaborator Frank Loesser. His additional Broadway credits include Guys and Dolls and Can-Can.
The Abe Burrows Award for Assistant Directors recipients are:
Photo by Aaron Lenhart
Mack Brown is a Brooklyn-based butch. They build precise new musicals, plays that challenge our collective moral compass, and theatre that is trans-genre and transsexual. Recent: Watchdog (Ars Nova/ANTFest), marked green at birth, marked female at birth (Fault Line Theatre), The Interrobangers (Theatre[Untitled]), As associate/assistant: Pictures From Home (Broadway), The Big Gay Jamboree (Off-Broadway), I Can Get It For You Wholesale (Classic Stage). Mack was the ‘22-23 Roundabout Directing Fellow, and currently serves as Lead Facilitator of the Roundabout Directors Group. They are an NYCLU Artist Ambassador, NYU Tisch Drama Gender Expansive Mentor, and work at Convergence Magazine with grassroots organizers and activists to produce media that sharpens our collective practice. Proud SDC member. mack-brown.com Headshot by Photo by Aaron Lenhart
Photo by NJ Agwuna
Tai Thompson is a NYC-based multidisciplinary artist specializing in new works and immersive theater. She has directed large-scale immersive theatrical productions throughout the US- notably the critically acclaimed series, Miami Motel Stories.
Selected work: Love’s Labour’s Lost (Two River), Dark Star from Harlem (La Mama- 2020 AUDELCO for Best Direction of a Musical), Men on Boats (NYU/Atlantic), A Chance for Redemption (Orlando Shakes), Breathe (NPT), Warriors (TheatreWorks), Moon Man Walk (FSU), The Democracy Project (Federal Hall), Long Distance Affair (PopUp Theatrics/ Juggerknot- 2021 Miami New Times Best Play Award), Miami Bus Stop Stories (2020 Knight Foundation New Work Award).
She was a 2018 SDCF Observer, 2018 Inaugural NAMT Observer, 2019 Drama League Classical Directing Fellow, 2022 Old Globe Classical Theatre Fellow, and 2023 Fulbright Award Finalist for South Korea. Also a playwright, her works include an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, Kleonostium, Not Quite Ripe, Pressures, and Lucky.
Finalist:
Photo by Ashley Garrett
Katie Young (she/her) is a New York based director & stage manager with a passion for labor organizing and animals. As a director, she enjoys plays that activate our bodies and spirits within space. Katie has directed world premier productions including Back and Forth by Richard Hollman (Super Secret Arts), VODVIL: A Classically Modern Magic Show with magician Andrew Evans (The Magic Patio), Paradise Lost and Found by Tirosh Schneider (Isle of Shoals Productions), Loyalty by Rob Ackerman (Without a Net Productions), and an all-female production of Julius Caesar set in a girls school with Pocket Universe. Works-in-development include: Pygmalion, Somebody Should Fix That with Violeta Picayo and Emily Zemba, Untitled Mental Breakdown Play by Jenn Jacobs, and a live-action-pixar-logo-inspired-puppet play. She was a member of the 2019 LCT Directors Lab.
Bios and quotes on this page are reflective exclusively of the individual artists.