Julia Flood Receives Award

Theatre of Young Audiences/USA (​TYA/USA​)​, the national service organization supporting, connecting, and advocating for the field of theatre for young audiences, will present the ​2023 National TYA/USA Awards​ in three categories: Metro Theater Company’s Artistic Director Julia Flood will receive the ​Harold Oaks Award for Sustained Excellence in TYA​; ​Brave Little Company​ (Troy Scheid, Artistic Director) will receive the ​TYA Artistic Innovation Award​; and ​Caitlyn McCain ​will receive the ​TYA Community Impact Award​.

The awards will be presented on May 12, 2023 as part of the 2023 TYA/USA National Festival & Conference, the largest gathering of theatre for young audiences professionals in North America. Over 200 artists, educators, and administrators will convene at this year’s event, held at Childsplay and the Tempe Center for the Arts in Arizona, to experience theatre from around the nation, exchange current practice, and discuss the future of the TYA industry.

“We are thrilled to celebrate and honor exemplary work in TYA with our TYA/USA awards for the first time since 2019,” says TYA/USA Executive Director, Sara Morgulis. “At a time when theatre is needed more than ever in our communities, these individuals and companies have showed resilience, creativity, and adaptability in the face of challenging circumstances. We look to them as leaders in our field and models of future creative work.”

The ​National TYA/USA Awards​ honor excellence in the field of Theatre for Young Audiences. Selected by a committee of peers from nominations made by TYA/USA members, awards are given annually in the following categories:

Harold Oaks Award for Sustained Excellence in TYA​: Julia Flood

The Harold Oaks Award for Sustained Excellence in TYA honors the achievements of individual leaders and companies that have made a significant and lasting impact on the field of TYA.

Julia is a remarkable artist and leader, who has continued to push Theatre for Young Audiences forward as an art form and as a community, in her role as the Artistic Director of Metro Theater Company in St. Louis, Missouri. She has championed equity and anti-racism throughout her career, recognizing the need to ensure that all young people feel reflected on stage and all artists have a place in TYA. She leans into radical collaboration, providing a platform for others and learning alongside a range of artists. She has nurtured a generation of artists who will continue to impact audiences of all ages.

TYA Artistic Innovation Award:​ Brave Little Company

The ​TYA Artistic Innovation Award​ honors ​an individual or company that has demonstrated innovation – experimentation in content or in form – in recent artistic work in TYA.

Brave Little Company’s work embodies their mission of theatre for EVERYONE. From collaborating with 100 members of Houston's refugee and immigrant communities in THE BIG "US" PROJECT, to combining Vietnamese and Asian folklore, immigrant experiences, and festive ghost stories in Paper Offerings, to their multi-state collaborative interactive video series initiative Missing from the Museum, BLC is working with their communities of Houston, Texas, to create relevant, engaging dual- and multi-language artistic practice that reflects the diversity of their audiences.

TYA Community Impact Award: Caitlyn McCain

The ​TYA Community Impact Award,​ honoring ​an individual or company that has demonstrated community impact through a project or initiative related to TYA. Awardees utilize the power of TYA to significantly enrich an underserved community in creative and meaningful ways.

Over the past three years, Caitlyn has supported the development of multiple online educational resources for New York City Children’s Theater, including “Creative Clubhouse” and an innovative virtual education resource for adults and children named “Start the Conversation,” designed to give grownups the tools to talk with young people about big topics. Videos cover topics such as race and racism, gender, immigration, emergency drills, and more. She is also the co-creator and co-host of The Trauma-Informed Toolkit for Educators. Thousands of families and educators have viewed these programs nationally.

About Julia Flood
Julia Flood has spent 45 years working in the professional theater, 25 of those dedicated exclusively to Theater for Young Audiences. Her journey led her from her native New England to Pennsylvania, New York, Los Angeles, Florida, and to many points in between before she arrived at her artistic home in St. Louis in February 2014 to become Artistic Director of Metro Theater Company. Previously, after many years as a freelance actor/director/producer/teaching artist/playwright, Julia served 16 years as Producing Artistic Director of Eckerd Theater Company, a small, nationally touring TYA company based at a performing arts center in Clearwater, Florida. A graduate of Northwestern University, Julia spent seven years as a resident member of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, an artist-led collaborative founded in Pennsylvania under the artistic direction of legendary acting teacher Alvina Krause. Through her studies with Miss Krause and her work as part of this ensemble embedded in a small town, Julia first came to understand the power that theater can have in transforming communities and the vital role Theater for Young Audiences plays in that process of change. Julia's belief in the power of theater to change the course of a young person’s life has led to a passion for devising and developing new plays and encouraging new voices in the theater. Julia has commissioned, developed, produced and/or directed dozens of new TYA plays. Recent work includes Spells of the Sea by Guinevere Govea with Anna Pickett, developed from the original podcast in collaboration with Megan Ann Rasmussen Productions, UT Austin, and Pegasus PlayLab at UCF, and produced this February as part of MTC’s 50th Anniversary Season, The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus by Eric Coble, developed as part of New Visions/New Voices 2018 at the Kennedy Center and toured in 2019, and Idris Goodwin’s Ghost from the book by Jason Reynolds, co-commissioned with Nashville Children’s Theatre, produced by MTC in February/March 2020. Julia is grateful for Metro Theater Company’s team of artists, administrators, board members, and volunteers whose work is always inspired by the intelligence and emotional wisdom of young people. Julia served on the national board of TYA/USA from 2011 until 2019 and continues to work to support the field of Theatre for Young Audiences.