Pasadena Playhouse artistic director Sheldon Epps has won a $125,000 Leadership Award from the James Irvine Foundation. “The citation noted that Epps, ‘one of the few African American artistic directors of a major regional theater in the country,’ has succeeded since 1997 in engineering a ‘remarkable renaissance’ in which the Pasadena Playhouse has increased its audience while diversifying it by age and race.”