Faculty and Staff

MCVA Professor wins Best Production award at New York Theater Festival

By
Antonia Gentile
Posted
September 4, 2024

Clinical Assistant Professor Akil DuPont, MFA, Media, Communications, and Visual Arts, won the Best Production award at the Spring/Summer 2024 New York Theater Festival for Underground, a story of the enslaved, told with the spirituals that guided them to freedom, and inspired by real events in America’s history. His role was as a writer, producer and director.

Pace University students Brooke Lyn Sicignano ’25, Ava Resco ’25, Adam Scott ’25, and Gannon Ripchik ’25 stand with Media, Communications, and Visual Arts professor Akil DuPont on stage
From L to R: Brooke Lyn Sicignano ’25, Ava Resco ’25, Akil DuPont, Adam Scott ’25, and Gannon Ripchik ’25.

Of his win, he said, “This award means so much to me! I've had this project inside me since 2007, before I went to film school. There was a lot of self-study to transition my art from film to theater. For the past 10 years, I've been studying the craft of live narrative performance in plays and musicals. This award lets me know that hard work, a vision, the right cast and crew, plus a little luck can make magic happen!”

On an unrelated but synchronistic note, Dupont’s Best Production Award was tied with the theatrical work, The Book or, Dear Reader, by Pace students Ava Resco ‘25 (Sands College), Gannon Ripchik ’25 (Sands College), Adam Scot ’25 (Sands College), Brooke Lyn Sicignano ’25 (Sands College), Anna Marie Tobin ‘25, Film and Screen Studies (Dyson), Directing (Sands College).