The third annual Black Theatre Coalition Gala, which will be held March 9 at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan, will honor Taraji P. Henson, Thomas Schumacher, Susan Fales-Hill, and Jessica Matten/Indigenous Film Academy. The "Building the Change" gala will celebrate entertainment professionals working in theatre, film, television, cultural institutions, and music.

The Chadwick Boseman Change Maker Award will be presented to Academy Award-nominated actor, producer, and entrepreneur Henson, who is set to make her Broadway debut this spring alongside Cedric the Entertainer in the Debbie Allen-directed Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Henson rose to fame with her breakout role in Hustle & Flow, earning a Screen Actors Guild nomination and a BET Award for Best Actress, and was most recently seen in the musical adaptation of The Color Purple, winning an NAACP Image Award and receiving a Screen Actors Guild ensemble nomination. Other film highlights include Hidden Figures, Acrimony, Proud Mary, Think Like a Man and Think Like a Man Too, Smokin’ Aces, No Good Deed, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Schumacher will receive the BTC Visionary Ally Award, in acknowledgment of setting standards of excellence in film, television, and theatre for over three decades. He has overseen the development, creation, and execution of the Walt Disney Company’s stage entertainment, Disney Theatrical Group, around the globe, including several versions of Beauty and the Beast, King David, The Lion King, Der Glöckner von Notre Dame, Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida, Mary Poppins, On the Record, Tarzan, High School Musical, The Little Mermaid, Peter and the Starcatcher, Newsies, Aladdin, Freaky Friday, Shakespeare in Love, Frozen, and Hercules.

Television writer/producer, author, and arts advocate Fales-Hill will receive the Poitier-Belafonte Award for Cultural Activism. The award was created in recognition of two groundbreaking Black artists and activists in the entertainment industry, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Former executive producer and writer of HBO Max series And Just Like That, Fales-Hill began her career as a writer’s apprentice on the original Cosby Show. She later transferred to its spin-off, A Different World, where she became one of Hollywood’s few female showrunners at the time. Other television credits include Can’t Hurry Love, Kirk, Suddenly Susan, and Showtime’s Linc’s, which she co-created. 

Matten, of the Indigenous Film Academy, will receive the Lynn Nottage Bold Beacon Award, honoring a trailblazing career as an actress and producer. Matten is an Indigenous actress and producer who has appeared in LeBron James’ Rez Ball, George R.R. Martin and Robert Redford’s Dark Winds, Jason Momoa’s Frontier, and the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender for Paramount Studios as Katara. Through 7 Forward Entertainment, she produced the Native-led TV series Tales from the Rez.

Tickets to the third annual Black Theatre Coalition Gala begin at $1,000. For tickets and more information, click here.