Atlanta theater community celebrates Suzi Bass nominations for 2025-26 season

The local Suzi Bass Awards spread the love when they announced the nominations for the 2025-2026 season on Monday night at the Alliance Theatre. A total of 44 productions are up for awards. 

The annual event, named after the late and prolific character actress who appeared onstage and in TV and film for decades, recognizes excellence in local theater. The organization was founded in 2003, and the first awards took place in 2006. 

Donna O. Willis, chair of the Suzi Bass Awards, feels Atlanta audiences have had an extraordinary range of theater to experience this year. “These nominations celebrate not only outstanding individual artists but the extraordinary depth of talent and creativity throughout our theater community,” she said in a statement. 

Among musicals, the Alliance Theatre and Atlanta Opera co-production of Fiddler on the Roof and True Colors’ Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella tied with 12 nods each, with Aurora Theatre’s The Wiz at 11. 

In the play category,  Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s The Venetians received nine nominations, with Theatrical Outfit’s Bleeding Hearts and The Alliance Theatre’s Covenant following with seven each. 

Alliance Theatre Artistic Director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, who also directed the Georgia-set thriller Covenant, was overjoyed at the company’s recognition.

“These nominations celebrate the thing I love most about theater: No one makes it alone,” she says. “Covenant began with an audacious question — how do you put the unseen onstage? — and answering it required an extraordinary force of an all-female creative team, a fearless all-Atlantan ensemble and a production team who met every wild idea not with ‘Can we do that?’ but ‘How do we make it happen?’ Each artist brought their imagination to the room and dared the next to dream bigger.” 

Fiddler on the Roof came together as a collaboration between the Alliance and The Atlanta Opera. “The Alliance and The Atlanta Opera each brought our own muscles, traditions and ways of telling stories, and, instead of meeting in the middle, we expanded the canvas,” says Kajese-Bolden. “To see both productions recognized across so many disciplines feels especially meaningful because these nominations illuminate the whole village behind the work.”

True Colors Artistic Director Jamil Jude was happy to see such a robust showing for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. “It is good to know that we’ve been embraced by this theater community and that the power of Black storytelling is still relevant,” he says. “That is a testament to all of the artists who have been a part of the True Colors family who continue to bring their excellence to the stage. Cinderella was a really special production for us. It meant a lot to our community to see themselves reflected back in this musical kind of way.”

All four shows from Theatrical Outfit’s 2025-2026 season landed nominations, including the world premiere of the dark comedy Bleeding Hearts, written by former Atlantan Steve Yockey. “This highlights the importance of our ‘Made in Atlanta’ new works program, which was designed to contribute to the development of a diverse Southern dramatic canon,’” says Theatrical Outfit Artistic Director Matt Torney. 

Yockey’s Venus, staged by Actor’s Express, also received recognition. “Atlanta is my hometown, so it feels great to be recognized,” the playwright says. “And especially thrilled that the small army of theater technicians that worked on Venus and Bleeding Hearts are getting some love.”

Venus landed a Best Ensemble in a Play nomination, where Suehyla El-Attar Young and Kate Donadio MacQueen compete not just against Josh Adams, Veronika Duerr, Christopher Hampton, Tony Larkin and Tess Malis Kincaid from Bleeding Hearts but the formidable casts from Covenant; Atlanta Shakespeare Company and Belle Esprit’s Emma; and Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s The Taming of the Shrew. Tough category, indeed. 

Competing for the Outstanding Production of a Play award are Bleeding Hearts, Covenant, Horizon Theatre’s The Heart Sellers, Actor’s Express’ The Thin Place and Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s The Venetians. 

The nominations for Outstanding Production of a Musical are Theater Emory’s Bright Star; Fiddler on the Roof; Girl from the North Country, staged by Actor’s Express with Oglethorpe University Theatre; Dad’s Garage’s Gutenberg! the Musical!; and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. 

Outstanding World Premiere Production nominees are Bleeding Hearts; Emma, written by Claire F. Martin with music by Omari Joseph; Aurora Theatre’s Initiative, written by Jacob York; Théâtre du Rêve’s Queen Bess, penned by Amina S. McIntyre; and Matt Barbot’s The Venetians.

The acting categories have 10 nominations each, and two winners will be selected. Tyren Duncan has an excellent chance of going home with hardware. He fills three of the 10 spots in the Featured Performer in a Play field: as Don Pedro in Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s Much Ado About Nothing; as Apemantus in Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s Timon of Athens; and as Aaron in Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s The Venetians.   

Aurora Theatre received the most nominations of all participating theaters, with 26 total, followed by Atlanta Shakespeare Company with 21 and Alliance Theatre with 19. 

It was a very strong theater season with several competitive categories here. Yet, one of my favorite productions — Actor’s Express’ A Strange Loop — received far fewer nominations than I hoped. And Terry Burrell, long one of Atlanta’s most reliable and versatile performers — and one who has never won a Suzi Award — was sadly not nominated for her glorious work as Amanda Wingfield in Theatrical Outfit’s engaging The Glass Menagerie. 

The 2026 Suzi Bass Awards Ceremony will take place November 16 at the Conant Performing Arts Center at Oglethorpe University. A full list of nominees is on the Suzi Bass Awards website. 

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband Craig.