The Suzi Awards of Atlanta were founded to promote and celebrate excellence in our professional theatre community.  Since our founding fifteen years ago, our all-volunteer organization has held in our hearts the firm commitment to fostering diversity, ensuring respect and holding a standard for all of our participants. 

And, it’s not enough. We must and will do better.

We are at our best when we engage with the world around us. This is a pivotal moment in our nation’s history and it is our mission to listen, to engage in meaningful dialogue and to effect real change in our community. As a volunteer organization that has attracted predominantly white people to its activities, we commit to engaging in active self-reflection on the ways in which our processes and practices can change to become more broadly inclusive and more particularly open to the diversity of professional theatrical work in Atlanta. We will not tolerate hate, racism, injustice or bigotry of any kind. We don’t want to be complicit in systems that do. We stand in solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters seeking justice and equality.

In January 2020, we began a strategic planning process to connect with our stakeholders and collectively determine our goals for the near future. We have managed to continue progress with our planning through Covid and will have more action items to announce soon. 

But immediately, the Board of the Suzis wants to announce that we are prioritizing changes to result in more diverse judging panels and board members as well as implementing an equity lens on everything that we do and evaluate. Celebrating excellence means not just recognizing excellent stagecraft, it also means holding a higher expectation for all of our theatres for inclusion and equity.  

We must and will do better.