Abingdon Theatre Company Celebrates 34 Years of Opening Doors

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By Jack Quinn, Publisher, TheaterScene.net
November 2, 2026 — Edison Ballroom

Abingdon Theatre Company gathered artists, patrons and supporters at the Edison Ballroom on Monday evening to celebrate its 34th anniversary and the start of a season titled Ever Forward, Ever Evolving: 34 Years of Breaking Boundaries. The company honored Sandy Duncan with its Impact Award, Michael Urie with its Off-Broadway Legacy Award and longtime board member John Gasdaska with its Beacon Award.

The program offered the familiar pleasures of a theater gala: a room filled with performers, a concert featuring Broadway and Off-Broadway talent, and an appeal to sustain the work that audiences rarely see. But the most revealing moments came in the remarks. They traced the distance between a child discovering an audience, an aspiring actor finding a different place in the theater, and an institution willing to take a chance on work before it is ready for a stage.

A Company Built Around the First Yes

Producing Artistic Director Chad Austin described Abingdon’s work as beginning well before opening night. A new play starts with a writer, an idea and someone prepared to help it develop. He thanked the staff, volunteers, artists, patrons and board members whose largely unseen labor allows that first commitment to become a reading, a workshop and, sometimes, a full production.

Austin pointed to the Pamela Paul Around the Table Reading Series, which gives writers the opportunity to hear scripts aloud and experiment, and to Raise the Page, Uplift the Word, a program supporting new voices. He also previewed a Brave New Voices presentation, Bobby at the Beechman: An Evening with Bobby Short, and the upcoming Off-Broadway premiere of Every Wednesday Night, a new musical set in a neighborhood karaoke bar and concerned with friendship, identity and second chances.

The opening remarks supplied a personal illustration of that mission. An ATC Board Member who had come from Brazil recalled first volunteering with Abingdon nearly a decade ago, then finding mentors, friendships and a community that eventually led her to board service. Her story gave the evening’s recurring language of opening doors a specific human meaning.

Sandy Duncan and the Discovery of an Audience

Sandy Duncan’s Impact Award recognized a career spanning more than six decades, from Broadway appearances in The Canterbury Tales and The Boy Friend to her celebrated Peter Pan, along with television and film work that brought her into American homes. A three-time Tony Award nominee and two-time Emmy nominee, she could have recited a long list of achievements. Instead, she returned to the beginning.

Duncan remembered dance lessons as a five-year-old in a Texas VFW hall near her father’s gas station. At a recital, another young dancer captivated her. Duncan began inventing steps of her own, smiling and playing to the audience. She described discovering a delight in performance that stayed with her for the rest of her life.

She delivered the story with an entertainer’s easy comic timing, joking about the passing years and reducing the vocabulary of a working dancer to four indispensable counts: “Five, six, seven, eight.” It was a fitting response to an award for impact. Her influence was not merely the sum of her roles, but the sustained pleasure of connecting with an audience.

John Gasdaska: A Beacon in a Difficult Week

John Gasdaska’s Beacon Award brought the evening’s most personal remarks. Gasdaska arrived in Manhattan in 1988 hoping to become a Broadway actor. He studied with William Esper and Wynn Handman and worked in theater and film before building a long career in real estate. More than a decade ago, he joined Abingdon’s board, finding a way to remain connected to the art form that first brought him to New York.

Austin described Gasdaska as more than a board member: an advocate, a sounding board and a friend who had believed in the company, its artists and its leadership. Gasdaska, in turn, praised Austin’s stewardship and the company’s ability to foster new work through difficult as well as successful periods.

Invoking artist Gerhard Richter’s description of art as the highest form of hope, Gasdaska reflected on the importance of theater amid war, division, intolerance and technological change. He spoke warmly of his fellow honorees, recalling Sandy Duncan’s screen performances and Michael Urie’s solo turn in Buyer & Cellar.

Then he revealed that his family had suffered an unexpected loss just the previous week: his older brother Bill had died at 67. He described Bill as a beacon for the family, remembered especially for his generosity with time, humor, hospitality, love and resources. Bill and his husband Roger, he said, had supported Abingdon that evening. Gasdaska urged guests to contribute in the same spirit, whether through a modest gift or a substantial pledge.

It was an unusually moving convergence of an award’s title and the life behind it. A man who once came to New York hoping to perform on Broadway was now helping others find their way onto the stage, while honoring a brother whose generosity had helped make that possible.

Michael Urie and the Off-Broadway Tradition

Michael Urie received the Off-Broadway Legacy Award, recognizing a career that has moved between intimate New York stages, Broadway and television. His Off-Broadway work includes The Temperamentals, Richard II and the solo comedy Buyer & Cellar; Broadway credits include Torch Song, Once Upon a Mattress and Oh, Mary! Television viewers know him from Ugly Betty and Shrinking, for which he has received Emmy recognition.

His selection underscored a central premise of Abingdon’s work: Off-Broadway is an artistic destination in its own right and a place where performers and new writing can develop before reaching broader audiences. The available recording captures the award introduction but not Urie’s acceptance remarks, and the company’s press office confirmed it has no copy of them, so his words are not reconstructed here.

The Music and the Work Ahead

Directed by Chad Austin, with music director Robbie Cowan, the gala concert brought together a large roster of Broadway and Off-Broadway performers: Maria Bilbao (Sweeney Todd), Hannah Cruz (Chess), Jacob Dickey (Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends), Kyle Ramar Freeman (Titanique), Aisha Jackson (The Great Gatsby), Blaine Krauss (Hamilton), Meecah (Hamilton), Samantha Pauly (The Great Gatsby), Shereen Pimentel (West Side Story), Carolina Rial (NBC’s The Voice), Analise Scarpaci (Mrs. Doubtfire), Nyla Sostre (MJ: The Musical), Alyssa Wray (ABC’s American Idol) and Curtis Wiley (Ain’t Too Proud), with special guest Vanessa Williams (West End’s The Devil Wears Prada). Cowan led the band on keys, joined by Sean Murphy on bass, Michael Manasseh on drums, Max Caine on guitar and Lo Wood on reeds. The program listed Álvaro Medina as emcee, and Allison Leah Hohman was stage manager. Dave Droxler, writer and performer of Abingdon’s Robin & Me: My Little Spark of Madness, made a surprise appearance.

The evening also supported Abingdon’s development programs through a mission-based auction led by former Artist-in-Residence Reynaldo Piniella, whose play Son of an Unknown Father was developed through the company. The company’s work includes mainstage productions, readings, the Carolyn Halpert Artist-in-Residence Program, Brave New Voices, the One Night Only Series and Abingdon Virtual. Its record includes work that has traveled beyond its initial developmental setting, among it Alex Edelman’s Just for Us and Jacqueline Novak’s Get on Your Knees.

Who Was There

The red carpet and ballroom drew artists, friends and supporters of the company. Among those photographed were honorees Sandy Duncan, Michael Urie and John Gasdaska; Rashad V. Chambers; actor Amy Carlson (“Blue Bloods,” Abingdon’s Stella & Marlon); Robert Cuccioli; Jaspal Binning, Michelle Potterf, Deidre Goodwin and Artist-in-Residence Pierre Marais (As Apple Pie); Marc Dobenecker; Bethany Ann Tesarck; Alison Fraser and Barrett Leddy; and Abingdon staff members Owen Mannion, Director of Production, and Kate Bell, Director of New Works & Audience Engagement.

Abingdon’s board, led by chair Katherine Kline and secretary Lisa W. Speltz, includes Beatriz Cavalieri, Linda Colonna, Merrie L. Davis, Amy E. Gewirtz, John Gasdaska, Yasmeen Mock and James Palazza, with founding board member Pamela Paul and Artistic Director Emeritus Jan Buttram. The gala host committee was Beatriz Cavalieri, Amy E. Gewirtz, Katherine Kline, Yasmeen Mock and James Palazza.

Board chair Katherine Kline reminded the room that ticket sales alone do not pay for the early stages of creating new theater. The first reading, workshop or experiment requires support before there is any guarantee of a finished production. Austin’s appeal was similarly practical: behind each moment onstage are budgets, calls, rehearsals and countless decisions that an audience never sees.

The night’s strongest image did not require a spotlight. It was the idea of one person opening a door for another. Duncan remembered the moment she learned to hold an audience. Gasdaska described a life that brought him back to the theater as a supporter. Austin spoke for the artists whose work is still only a first draft. Thirty-four seasons in, Abingdon’s future rests on whether someone will continue to say yes to the next voice.

Photos by Shawn Salley Photography, courtesy of Abingdon Theatre Company / Skollar PR.