Bridge Awards and Benefit 2026
May 11, 2026
The 2026 Bridge Awards and Benefit honors two leaders whose work has shaped the cultural and labor landscape of our city and beyond.
This year, Working Theater is proud to honor Brendan Griffith (President of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO), a tireless advocate for working people across New York City, and Gregory Mosher (Tony Award-winning producer, theater director, and Executive Director of the Office of the Arts at Hunter College), whose visionary leadership helped define generations of American theater. Together, these leaders embody the bridge between art and labor that sits at the heart of Working Theater’s mission.
The 2026 Bridge Awards and Benefit supports Working Theater’s 41st season, which includes its second annual Stage Left new play festival focused on amplifying stories from the frontlines of workers’ movements and creating immediate action for audiences; support for the development of Control, a new play about air traffic controllers from Playwright-In-Residence, Kallan Dana; the annual commission of new plays by working-class playwrights through the Mark Plesent Commission Fund; and continued theater-education programming for communities of working people.
Location: The Manhattan Penthouse | 80 Fifth Avenue, E 14th St, New York, NY 10011
Meet the Honorees
Brendan Griffith
Brendan Griffith was elected President of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO in July 2025. He joined the NYCCLC in 2009 and had previously been its Chief of Staff since 2011. He is also a proud member of Iron Workers Local 40 and the United University Professions. Brendan’s work has involved coordination of various CLC programs as well as oversight of day to day operations, but some of his most rewarding efforts have been his work on the Annual Workers Memorial Day Commemoration, the Annual Commemoration to the 146 victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and the CLC’s Annual Labor Day Parade. He currently serves on the boards of the American Labor Museum – Botto House and the Worker Justice Project. He is on the Advisory Board of the Mount Sinai Selikoff Center for Occupational Health and serves as Vice Chair of the Board of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health. Additionally, Brendan is an Adjunct Instructor at SUNY Empire State College’s Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies. Brendan completed an apprenticeship with Iron Workers Local 40, is a graduate of the NYS AFL-CIO/Cornell Union Leadership Institute and is also a graduate of Fordham University where he majored in Political Science.
Gregory Mosher
Gregory Mosher is the former Director of the Lincoln Center Theater and Artistic Director of Goodman theater in Chicago. He has produced and/or directed over 200 plays, nearly half of which were world or American premieres, at those theaters and from Broadway and London’s West End to South African townships. He focused on new work, accessibility – Member tickets to Lincoln Center Theater were $10 during his tenure – and diverse programming. He worked with many of the 20th century’s legendary theater artists, including Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Leonard Bernstein, and the Nobel Prizewinners Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, and Samuel Beckett. Mosher presented the premieres of new plays by David Mamet, Richard Nelson, John Leguizamo, John Guare, and Spalding Gray, including the premieres of Sarafina!, Freak, Six Degrees of Separation, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Mule Bone, Glengarry Glen Ross, and many more. He currently serves as Executive Director of Hunter College’s Office of the Arts.
KEVIN R. FREE
CYNTHIA BASTIDAS
LAUREN PATTEN
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Kevin R. Free has been making theater in New York City for 30 years and narrating audiobooks for 25 years. He was the first black man to play Bellomy in The Fantasticks in the production’s 57-year run Off-Broadway. He won an Obie Award as the Producing Artistic Director of The Fire This Time Festival in 2015, for producing world premiere plays of playwrights of the African Diaspora. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile Magazine in 2023. In 2024, his play, Swimming Uphill, written for André De Shields and directed by Zhailon Levingston, received a New Works Lab fellowship at the Apollo. He is the former Artistic Director of Mile Square Theatre, where, in his 3-year tenure, he produced four world premiere plays, including Gabriel Diego Hernandez’s Quarter Rican. This is his 8th joyful collaboration with The Working Theater and his brother Reynaldo Piniella. Instagram: @kevinrfree www.kevinrfree.com
Cynthia Bastidas (she/her/ella) is a NYC-based bilingual Chicana actor and filmmaker from the California/Mexico border in the Imperial Valley. She founded Semillita Productions LLC, a media arts company that centers the stories of the Femme Latinx experience in the United States. Her short film missguidance was awarded Outstanding Short at the XicanIndie Film Festival and Audience Award at the Topaz Film Festival. She is currently directing and producing I Feel Pretty, a feature length documentary film examining Anti-blackness in the US Latine community. Her TV acting credits include Ramy S2 E6, Homeland S6 E6 and theater credits include Don’t Look Back (Voyage Theater Company) PlayOn! Shakespeare Festival (Classic Stage Company), Original Sound (Cherry Lane Theatre) and Just Like Us (Denver Center Theatre). To learn more about Semillita Productions or Cynthia as an actor visit www.semillitaproductions.com and www.cynthiabastidas.com.
Lauren Patten (she/her) was the breakout star of the musical Jagged Little Pill, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, as well as the Grammy and Drama Desk Awards. Other stage credits include Fun Home on Broadway, and the off-Broadway productions of The Counterfeit Opera (Little Island), The Lonely Few (MCC), The Wolves (Playwrights’ Realm; Drama Desk and Obie Awards), and Days of Rage (Second Stage). On television, Lauren starred in the Hulu original series Death and Other Details, and is known for her work on Blue Bloods (CBS), The Good Fight (Paramount+), and Succession (HBO). She is featured in the upcoming Amazon series Off Campus. @pattenlauren
Thank you to our 2026 Benefit Committee
Robert Arcaro*
Yvonne Armstrong, President 1199SEIU
Christopher Bugeya, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield
Peter Coen, Cigna
Mario Cilento, NYS AFL-CIO
Sony Dabao-Salvador*
Christopher Erikson,* IBEW Local 3
Michael Fina, Union Labor Advisory Network
Jordan Fox,*
Nick Galipeau, OPEIU Local 153
Elise Goyette*
Patricia Judah Harris*
Bill Henning,* OPEIU Local 32
Janella Hinds,* NYC Central Labor Council
Christine O’Connor,* EmblemHealth
Lavender Rouzier,* MagnaCare
Hector Ruiz,* New York City Public Schools
Faith Ryan,* Stawski Partners
Melissa Shetler*, Climate Jobs Institute, Cornell ILR
Karla Pineda, LCLAA
Roslyn Yasser*
NYC- ATU
*Member, Working Theater Board of Directors