SDCF is thrilled to announce the 2024 – 2025 Joe A. Callaway Award recipients and finalists. The Joe A. Callaway Award is a peer-given award recognizing excellence in the arts of stage direction and choreography in each New York City Off-Broadway season.

Photo by Matt Murphy

Zhailon Levingston

for excellence in direction of Table 17 (MCC)

Zhailon Levingston is a Louisiana-raised storyteller, director, and activist who co-directed CATS: THE JELLICLE BALL, an immersive reimagining of the classic musical that premiered in 2024 at New York City’s Perelman Arts Center. The production earned him an Obie Award (co-Directing) as well as a Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for Outstanding Direction of a Musical.

Zhailon’s first “Broadway” job was selling tickets to Broadway shows in Times Square. In 2017 he sold concessions for multiple Broadway theaters. At 27 years old, he became the youngest Black director in Broadway history, Directing the Broadway production of CHICKEN AND BISCUITS. His other directing credits include WONDERFUL TOWN at New York City Center Encores; RECONSTRUCTING at Brooklyn Academy of Music (co-directed with Rachel Chavkin); Little Miss Perfect (Olney Theatre Center);  PATIENCE at Second Stage Theatre; and TABLE 17 at MCC Theater (Lortel Award nominee for Outstanding Direction) and is currently playing Los Angeles’ Geffen Playhouse.

Levingston is a board member of the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Artistic Director of Inheritance Theatre Project, and co- created a ‘Theatre of Change’ course at Columbia University School of Law that is still being taught today. Once a year he returns to his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana to direct community theater as a way to stay connected to his roots.

Photo by Franklin Thompson

Darrell Grand Moultrie

 for excellence in choreography for Goddess at The Public Theater

Darrell Grand Moultrie: A recipient of the Princess Grace Choreography Fellowship Award, Darrell Grand Moultrie’s work includes the Pulitzer Prize winning play FAT HAM (Broadway & The Public) SATURDAY CHURCH (New York Theatre Workshop) 12TH NIGHT (Shakespeare in the Park) GODDESS (The Public Theater) Disney’s new revival of the Tony Award winning musical AIDA in the Netherlands, GOOD BONES (The Public Theater) MERRY WIVES (Shakespeare in the Park) DADDY (The New Group) SPACE DOGS (MCC) WITNESS UGANDA (American Repertory Theater), SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS (MTC) INVISIBLE THREAD (Second Stage), REDWOOD (Portland Center Stage Theater), EVITA and PRIDE & PREJUDICE (Kansas City Repertory Theatre) and EL PUBLICO (Teatro Real – Madrid)

Moultrie has created and staged works for dance companies across the world including American Ballet Theatre, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Ballet X, Atlanta Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet Colorado Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, BalletMet Columbus, Ailey 2, Tulsa Ballet, Richmond Ballet, Smuin Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, Grand Rapids Ballet, The Juilliard School, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, and NBA Ballet in Japan among others.

Moultrie served as a choreographer on Beyonce’s record breaking MRS CARTER World Tour.

A native New Yorker, Moultrie is a graduate of P.S. 144, The Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts, LaGuardia High School and The Juilliard School.

Callaway Finalists

Zack DeZon

Ken Rus Schmoll

for excellence in direction for I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan at Atlantic Theater Company

Ken Rus Schmoll most recently directed Mona Pirnot’s I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan at Atlantic Theater Company. He has directed numerous world premieres off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, and regionally, as well as a few in Sweden, by writers including Mia Chung, Erin Courtney, Will Eno, Madeleine George, David Greenspan, Rob Handel, Jordan Harrison, Ann Marie Healy, Lucas Hnath, Kristen Kosmas, Ethan Lipton, Ellen Maddow, Max Posner, Ariana Reines, Kate E. Ryan, Jenny Schwartz, Hedda Krausz Sjögren, and Anne Washburn. He is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb and co-founder of its directing fellowship, and is a former co-leader of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. He is the recipient of two Obie Awards and nominations for both the Lucille Lortel Award and the Drama League Award, and was previously a finalist for the Joe A. Callaway Award for his direction of Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand at New York Theatre Workshop. He got his MFA under the tutelage of Anne Bogart and Robert Woodruff, and has been a member of SDC since 2005.

Photo by Akilah Townsend

Whitney White

for excellence in direction of Liberation at Roundabout Theatre Company

Whitney White is a Tony-nominated, Obie Award and Lilly Award winning director, writer, and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. Whitney was a staff writer on the Boots Riley series I’m a Virgo for Amazon and is part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Her five-part musical exploration of Shakespeare’s women is currently under commission with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK. Most recently, she directed the Broadway premiere of LIBERATION, and THE LAST FIVE YEARS, starring Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren and is developing a stage adaptation of THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT with Eboni Booth and composer Mitski.

Recent directing: Saturday Church— a new musical featuring songs by Sia and Honey Dijon (New York Theatre Workshop), Walden (Second Stage), Jordans (Public Theater), Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (Broadway), The Secret Life of Bees (The Almeida), Soft (Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Direction), On Sugarland (Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Direction), What to Send Up When it Goes Down (The Public, Playwrights Horizons, BAM, Woolly Mammoth, America Repertory Theatre), The Amen Corner (Shakespeare DC), Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (Second Stage/WP Theater), For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad (Soho Rep).

Original works include Semblance (NYTW), Definition (Bushwick Starr), and Macbeth in Stride for which she won an Elliot Norton Award for Best Musical Performance (American Repertory Theatre, Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company). BA Northwestern, MFA Brown University.