Kravis Center Names Lebow Award Winners

Royal Palm Beach High School junior Sophia Madden. Photo Courtesy Mary Stucchi

Celebrating its 12th year of honoring local Title 1 high schoolers for their excellence in Shakespearean performances, the Lebow Awards were presented on Jan. 22, where participating students and teachers also attended the evening’s performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Cash prizes totaling $5,000 were bestowed on six Palm Beach County students from two area high schools following an adjudication process.

“This award at the Kravis Center is a fitting tribute to Alan Lebow, a man whose passion in life involved theater, film, art and literature,” said Tracy Butler, director of education at the Kravis Center. “We are pleased to honor the accomplishments of the 2022 Lebow Award recipients, as well as the commitment of their teachers. The students all gave outstanding performances, and this program would not be possible without the support of the Lebow family’s Kids’ Dreams Inc. foundation.”

Sponsored by Kids’ Dreams Inc., in memory of its co-founder Alan Lebow, the Kravis Center award program engages students from Title I high schools and provides the opportunity for them to perform short selections from William Shakespeare’s works before a panel of distinguished judges. In 2015, Kids’ Dreams made a gift to the Kravis Center to permanently endow the Lebow Award.

The student adjudication took place on Dec. 11, where the participants performed their selected works and were evaluated and scored by three judges in five categories of performance: concentration, emotional commitment, energy, evidence of understanding and overall performance.

The Lebow Award judges included Desmond Gallant, Courtney Poston and Karen Stephens.

The two top winners were seniors from Forest Hill High School, Madison McCalla, a Kravis Center DeGeorge Academy alumna, and Curran Stinchcomb. Each won a prize of $1,000. Diani Galarza-Alvarez, and Katelyn Daunais both seniors at Forest Hill High School; Sophia Madden, a junior at Royal Palm Beach High School; and Anne-Marie Gousse, a junior at Forest Hill High School were awarded $750 as honorable mentions.

For more information on the Kravis Center’s education programs, visit www.kravis.org.