A DC-BASED COMPANY, and at our core:
DEVELOPING AND PRODUCING ORIGINAL WORKS OF MUSIC-THEATRE,
FOSTERING THE GROWTH OF ARTISTS,
AND ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY IN PARTNERSHIP
Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
the Gary Maker Audience Award
We are proud to announce that we have re-established the Gary Maker Audience Award, originally created in 2011 by Lorraine Treanor the former editor-in-chief DCTheatre Scene. During COVID Lorraine retired after many years of service to our theatre community.
She mentored many writers. Her standards for critical writing were uncompromising but her joy of live theatre was ever infectious.
Lorraine created many initiatives to lift up the local theater community, but none so imaginative and bold than her launching the Gary Maker Audience Award, an annual event, asking production houses to partner in the endeavor and nominate an exceptional audience member, and then one from the region was selected through a careful process.
The Gary Maker Audience Award is the only recognition given by any theater community in the nation to an audience member to be bestowed not for large financial contributions but in recognition of outstanding audience members “who are passionate, involved, informed, and grounded in their love for theater and who lend their time and personal support to encourage other audience members and who see that theater in the Washington area not only survives, but thrives,” DC Theatre Scene publisher Lorraine Treanor remarked.
And this is what she wrote:
“Most art is finished before it ever reaches an audience. A painting, a sculpture, a film is what it is. We, as viewers, add nothing.
But live theatre exists to be experienced. Writers spin their ideas into words and their words into scripts. Designers, directors and performers collaborate for weeks, months, sometimes years to bring their unique interpretations to those words. Yet not until an audience arrives does theatre come to life.”
To honor Lorraine, her vision and exceptional leadership, in 2024 Alliance for New Music-Theatre gathered a team representing the DC theater community to re-establish the annual Gary Maker Audience Award.
Read more about the Gary Maker Award: The life of Gary Maker, the artist who created the glass award, and interviews with each past award recipient. Long live great audience members!
The first recipient in 2024 was Greg Williams, longtime supporter of theater in the DMV and an avid theater goer with multiple subscriptions who followed the development of productions from start to full production and especially championed new works.
After a successful career in finance, working for several banks, Greg turned his efforts supporting the DMV theatre community. He always showed up and enjoyed the shows!
Sadly, Greg died on October 9 2025. He will be missed.
On May 3, 2025 the Gary Maker Audience Award was presented to longtime Washington theater patrons José Alberto Uclés and husband Tom Noll at a special ceremony at GALA Hispanic Theatre for their enthusiastic support of and ubiquitous, vital, and colorful presence at Washington area theaters. Uclés and Noll were nominated by both GALA Hispanic Theatre and Theater Alliance. The nominees “bring incredible social cheerleading to the whole theater community…their energy and positivity encourage others to engage with our work,” Theater Alliance noted in its nomination. GALA pointed out that they “advocate for all theaters.”
It should also be noted that in addition to their enthusiastic support, Uclés and Noll are well known for their extraordinary haberdashery, often on display in theater and non-theater settings alike.