Masi Asare of Northwestern University and arts journalist Billy McEntee have been named winners of the 2024-25 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
The Nathan Award committee comprises the heads of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton and Yale Universities and is administered by Cornell’s Department of Literatures in English.
“In her groundbreaking book, ‘Blues Mamas & Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage,’ Asare reveals the far-reaching influence of black women vocalists' foundational contributions to American musical theater as performers, teachers and students,” the award committee said in a statement. “Her meticulous, nuanced analysis of sound and vocal technique as well as of black women's historical voice pedagogy makes it possible for us to hear the reverberations of intersectional singing practices across American theater culture.”
Asare is a Tony-nominated songwriter (“Paradise Square”), voice teacher and scholar. An associate professor of theatre and performance studies at Northwestern, she directs its American Musical Theatre Project and holds the McCormick Professorship for teaching excellence. Her book also received the Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award from the American Musicological Society, and she has been honored as a woman composer with the Ziegfeld Award.
“With remarkable nimbleness, McEntee’s criticism homes in on key aspects of a production while simultaneously locating it in its historical, aesthetic and political-economic contexts – all in clear and lively prose,” the award committee wrote. In “On Digital Naturalism,” his review of “Redwood,” McEntee “captures the impact of the production’s visually spectacular giant digital trees, reckoning with the potentially detrimental effects of digital technology on an audience’s imagination. Across all his criticism, McEntee affirms drama’s capacity for such awe and revelation,” wrote the committee.
McEntee is theater editor at Brooklyn Rail, where he writes essays on new works, often experimental-leaning ones with shorter runs. He has freelanced for The Boston Globe, American Theatre, Vanity Fair, and many other publications that have limited their arts coverage. McEntee is also a site-specific theater maker; “The Voices in Your Head” was a 2025 Drama Desk Award nominee for Unique Theatrical Experience, and “Slanted Floors” made Vulture's list of Best Theater of 2025. He teaches at The School of The New York Times and the American College Theater Festival.
The award was endowed by George Jean Nathan (1882-1958), a prominent theater critic who published 34 books on the theater and co-edited (with H.L. Mencken) two influential magazines, The Smart Set and The American Mercury. Nathan graduated from Cornell in 1904.
Recent Nathan Award winners include Brittani Samuel, Rhoda Feng, Vinson Cunningham, Maya Phillips and Alexis Soloski.
