Theater News

Actors' Equity Names Lin-Manuel Miranda Recipient of 2018 Rosetta LeNoire Award

The award is given to individuals, theaters, or producers with an exemplary record of hiring or promoting people of color, women, and actors with disabilities.

Lin-Manuel Award is the recipient of the Actors' Equity Association's 2018 Rosetta LeNoire Award.
Lin-Manuel Miranda is the recipient of the Actors' Equity Association's 2018 Rosetta LeNoire Award.
(© Walter McBride)

Actors' Equity Association has announced that Lin-Manuel Miranda was awarded the 2018 Rosetta LeNoire Award at the equity's national membership meeting today. Established in 1988, the award is given to an individual, theater, or producing organization with an exemplary record in hiring or promoting people of color, women, and actors with disabilities.

"Lin-Manuel Miranda has changed the face of American theatre with his intentionally multi-cultural re-telling of American history in the musical Hamilton," Christine Toy Johnson, the equity's National Equal Employment Opportunity Chair, said in a statement. "In casting non-Caucasian actors to portray Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and other Founding Fathers, as well as their families, Miranda has created new opportunities for performers of color and proven that non-Caucasian performers can be the face of massively commercial works of art."

With book, music, and lyrics by Miranda, direction by Thomas Kail, choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler, and music direction and orchestrations by Alex Lacamoire, Hamilton is based on Ron Chernow's biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. The musical tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant from the West Indies who became George Washington's right-hand man during the Revolutionary War, and was the new nation's first treasury secretary. The musical won 11 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Score, Book of a Musical, Direction of a Musical, Choreography, and Orchestrations.