FILE - In this June 8, 2014 file photo, Kenny Leon receives the award for best direction of a play for "A Raisin in the Sun" on stage at the 68th annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall, in New York. The Dramatists Guild Fund has awarded $170,000 to non-profit theaters across the country, from the established Soho Repertory Theatre in New York City to the Mo'olelo Performing Arts Company in San Diego. The Fund on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015, announced 129 winners, including Tony Award-winning director Leon's True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta, as well as Plan B Theatre Company from Salt Lake City and the Spooky Action Theater in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

NEW YORK, N.Y. - The Dramatists Guild Fund has awarded $170,000 to dozens of non-profittheatres across the country, from the firmly established Soho Repertory Theatre in New York City to the young Mo'olelo Performing Arts Company in San Diego.

The fund on Thursday announced 129 winners, including Tony Award-winning director Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta, as well as Plan B Theatre Company from Salt Lake City and the Spooky Action Theater in Washington, D.C.

Winners must develop or produce contemporary American plays and musicals and usually have operating budgets of less than $1 million. Other winners included the San Francisco Playhouse, the Chicago Dramatists, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Theatre and Dallas Theater Center. Grants have been handed out since the Fund was founded in 1962.

"It's really a wide variety of theatres interacting with their community and trying to create change through theatre and bring people together," said Rachel Routh, the executive director of the fund. "That can mean anything from an LGBT play festival in the middle of Texas to developmental readings in Minneapolis to a bigger theatre here in New York."

Many of New York City's off-Broadway theatres and centres were recognized, including the Vineyard Theatre, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Naked Angels, the Lark Play Development Center, the New Dramatists, Playwrights Horizons, Riverside Theatre, The Actors Company Theatre, The Tank, Urban Stages and The Brick Theater, Inc.

The Soho Rep also got an additional $19,300 emergency grant to help balance its budget after the theatre's largest fundraising effort of the year was cancelled due to a cracked support beam at the gala's venue.

The Dramatists Guild Fund is the public charity arm of the Dramatists Guild of America, a group that represents more than 6,000 playwrights, composers, lyricists and librettists whose work is on Broadway, off-Broadway and in regional theatres. Some 200 applications for grants were received this year.

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Online: http://www.dramatistsguildfund.org

News from © The Associated Press, 2015