Barrie & Bernice Stavis Playwright Award
recognizing an outstanding emerging playwright
2024 - Alex Lin
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Alex Lin calls herself “just a girl from Jersey.” Her plays have been developed at Roundabout, Second Stage, NYTW, MTC, Rattlestick, the O'Neill, South Coast Rep, New Harmony, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Two River, Playwrights Realm, Central Square Theatre, Amphibian Stage, Theater Mu, and Cape Cod Theater Project. As an actor, she has performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, HVSF, Ma-Yi, Ojai Playwrights Conference, New Victory, Fault Line, Ensemble Studio Theater, Jewish Plays Project, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. Guest lectures at CMU, Rutgers, and Union College. Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist and Weissberger Award nominee. Juilliard.
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2023 - a.k. payne
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a.k. payne (she/they) is a playwright, artist-theorist, and theatermaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Their plays love on and engage the interdependencies of Black pasts, presents and futures and seek to find/remember language that might move us towards our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from the Yale School of Drama. Their work has been a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is the current recipient of the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights and Atlantic Theater Company's Judith Champion Launch Commission. Their work has been developed with the National Play-wrights Conference, The New Harmony Project, Great Plains Theater Conference, and Manhattan Theater Club's "Groundworks Lab." They are a proud graduate of Pittsburgh Public Schools; grand-child of the Great Migration; descendant of a music teacher and a carpenter, who both march every year with their unions in Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade; a queer & non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the ‘New Jim Crow;” and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer and spacemaker.
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2022 - Cathy Tagnak Rexford
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Cathy Tagnak Rexford is a playwright, poet and fiction writer from Anchorage, Alaska. She is of Iñupiaq, French, German, and English descent. She holds a BA from The Evergreen State College in Native American Studies; a BFA with honors from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Creative Writing; and an MFA from The University of British Columbia in Creative Writing and Theatre, where she was a Full Circle Aboriginal Ensemble Member and an Aboriginal Graduate Fellow.
Rexford has written four full-length dramas: The Namesake, Land Claims, Whale Song, and Cold Case. In 2008, The Namesake was selected by Native Voices at the Autry for their First Look Series. The 2019 Perseverance Theater staging of Whale Song was the first professional production of one of Rexford’s plays. Most recently Rexford wrote Cold Case, as a Playwright’s Circle Fellow at Perseverance Theatre. This fall Cathy’s excited to be serving as a Producer on True Detective: Night Country an upcoming HBO series starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis that will be shot in Iceland and set in Alaska. Rexford’s poetry has appeared in various anthologies. Her chapbook Black Ice appeared in Effigies: An Anthology of New Indigenous Writing, Pacific Rim (2009), and individual poems have appeared in collections such as Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (2011) and When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (2022). She is the author of A Crane Story (2013), a young adult novel based in Arctic Alaska. She has received fellowships from the Truman Capote Scholarship Foundation at the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Alaska-based Rasmuson Foundation, and the First Peoples House of Learning at The University of British Columbia. In addition to writing, Rexford has worked extensively in Native education and language efforts as a grassroots organizer, film producer, a non-profit director, and coordinator of Iñupiaq education in Alaska’s northernmost school district. She currently writes in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and son. |
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2021 - Sanaz Toossi
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Sanaz Toossi is an Iranian-American playwright from Orange County, California. Her plays include Wish You Were Here (Williamstown Audible 2020; Playwrights Horizons 2022) and English (Atlantic/Roundabout 2022; Weissberger New Play Award; Kilroys’ List 2019). She is currently under commission at the Atlantic Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, IAMA Theatre and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (American Revolutions Cycle). Sanaz is a member of Youngblood and the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at the Lark, and an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group. She was the 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow and a recipient of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award. MFA: NYU Tisch. TV: 5 Women; A League of Their Own. Sanaz is a proud child of immigrants. Read more about Sanaz in the NY Times HERE A Letter to Sanaz Toossi from Heidi Schreck Playwright Sanaz Toossi Is Making Theater in Her Own Image |
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2020 - Erika Dickerson-Despenza
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Erika Dickerson-Despenza is a Blk, queer feminist poet-playwright and cultural-memory worker from Chicago, Illinois. She is a 2020 Grist 50 Fixer and was a National Arts & Culture Delegate for the U.S. Water Alliance's One Water Summit 2019. Awards: Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award (2020), Thom Thomas Award (2020), Lilly Award (2020), Princess Grace Playwriting Award (2019). Residencies & Fellowships: Tow Playwright-in-Residence at The Public Theater (2019-2020), New York Stage and Film Fellow-in-Residence (2019), New Harmony Project Writer-in Residence (2019), Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow (2018-2019), The Lark Van Lier New Voices Fellow (2018). Communities: BYP100 Squad Member, Ars Nova Play Group (2019-2021), Youngblood Collective (EST). Commissions: The Public Theater, Studio Theatre & Williamstown Theatre Festival. Productions: CULLUD WATTAH (2019 Kilroys List) originally slated at The Public Theater, 2020; Victory Gardens Theater, 2021. Currently, Erika is developing a 10-play Katrina Cycle, including SHADOW/LAND and [HIEROGLYPH] (2019 Kilroys List), focused on the effects of Hurricane Katrina and its state-sanctioned, man-made disaster rippling in & beyond New Orleans.
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aRTISTIC STATEMENT
As an interdisciplinary theatre-maker, my work converges literary, visual and musical worlds. I investigate, dismantle, critique and reconstruct mass media images of iconic, commonplace and invisibilized figures within the African Diaspora. My thematic obsessions deliberately center Black women’s land legacies, stored body knowledge of ancestral memory, girlhood trauma, maternal bonds, ritual, religion and distinct experiences of environmental racism. These themes point toward my central fixation: Black women’s literal and figurative dismemberment and corporeal restitution as a means of belonging--to ourselves, our families, dominant culture and our world. Afrosurrealism, Afro-futurism, magic realism, narrative re/memory and emergent strategy are conceptual preoccupations of my work. I am profoundly inspired by Black Feminist and Womanist Theories, oral histories, biblical folk sermons, regional Black vernaculars, race records and highly synergized Black sociopolitical historical landscapes. Together, these public remnants of history frame the trajectory of my dramatic work and become the palimpsest over which I craft new narratives.
My mission is to sustain a career as an interdisciplinary theatremaker and cultural worker who uses world travel as a gateway for transnational coalition building and playwriting as a mirror and place of possibility for Black women’s liberation. I am often frustrated by single-issue narratives, dramaturgical negligence, linguistic homogeny and the invisibility of Black women’s stories in commercial theatre. Through my artistic practice, I aim to resist Black feminine erasure and endeavor to re/imagine a world where a kaleidoscope of Black womanhood is lavishly welcomed and affirmed. Deeply rooted in linguistic anthropology and literary archeology, I am journeying through relics of Black women’s communities, gathering our remains and re/visioning what we know about our place in this world.
Straddling the worlds of art and activism, I use playwriting as a tool for strategizing the liberation of oppressed peoples. Equity, radical empathy and sci-fi living are the core values anchoring my work. In theatre, I practice the future, re/imagine the past and examine the present. Because I view my role as a theatre artist as trifold—activist, social investigator and culture worker—grassroots organizing and cultural preservation are central to my work. As a grassroots organizer and strategist, I cultivate and sustain relationships with a diverse community of artists, activists, organizers, faith leaders, healing practitioners and scholars. The fruit of these relationships emerge as artist/activist collectives, political education workshops, creative and direct actions, and artistic collaborations.
My mission is to sustain a career as an interdisciplinary theatremaker and cultural worker who uses world travel as a gateway for transnational coalition building and playwriting as a mirror and place of possibility for Black women’s liberation. I am often frustrated by single-issue narratives, dramaturgical negligence, linguistic homogeny and the invisibility of Black women’s stories in commercial theatre. Through my artistic practice, I aim to resist Black feminine erasure and endeavor to re/imagine a world where a kaleidoscope of Black womanhood is lavishly welcomed and affirmed. Deeply rooted in linguistic anthropology and literary archeology, I am journeying through relics of Black women’s communities, gathering our remains and re/visioning what we know about our place in this world.
Straddling the worlds of art and activism, I use playwriting as a tool for strategizing the liberation of oppressed peoples. Equity, radical empathy and sci-fi living are the core values anchoring my work. In theatre, I practice the future, re/imagine the past and examine the present. Because I view my role as a theatre artist as trifold—activist, social investigator and culture worker—grassroots organizing and cultural preservation are central to my work. As a grassroots organizer and strategist, I cultivate and sustain relationships with a diverse community of artists, activists, organizers, faith leaders, healing practitioners and scholars. The fruit of these relationships emerge as artist/activist collectives, political education workshops, creative and direct actions, and artistic collaborations.
PLAYS
PLAYS
[hieroglyph] by Erika Dickerson-Despenza
Cast: 4
Genre: drama, period, political
Keyword: black girlhood, sexual assault, sexual violence, Hurricane Katrina, displacement, PTSD, coming of age
Involuntarily displaced in Chicago two months post-Katrina, 13-year-old Davis wrestles with the cultural landscape of a new city and school community while secretly coping with the PTSD of an assault at the Superdome. With her mother still in New Orleans committed to the fight for Black land ownership and her father committed to starting a new life in the Midwest, divorce threatens to further separate a family already torn apart. Will Davis be left hanging in the balance? [hieroglyph] traverses the intersection of environmental racism, sexual violence, and displacement, examining the psychological effects of a state-sanctioned man-made disaster on the most vulnerable members of the Katrina diaspora.
cullud wattah by Erika Dickerson-Despenza
Cast: 5
Genre: drama, political, tragedy
Keyword: environmental racism, African-American family, water justice, Flint water crisis, Black women
It’s been 936 days since Flint has had clean water. Marion, a third generation General Motors employee, is consumed by layoffs at the engine plant. When her sister, Ainee, seeks justice and restitution for lead poisoning, her plan reveals the toxic entanglements between the city and its most powerful industry, forcing their family to confront the past-present-future cost of survival. As lead seeps into their home and their bodies, corrosive memories and secrets rise among them. Will this family ever be able to filter out the truth? CULLUD WATTAH blends form and bends time, diving deep into the poisonous choices of the outside world, the contamination within, and how we make the best choices for our families’ future when there are no real, present options.
[hieroglyph] by Erika Dickerson-Despenza
Cast: 4
Genre: drama, period, political
Keyword: black girlhood, sexual assault, sexual violence, Hurricane Katrina, displacement, PTSD, coming of age
Involuntarily displaced in Chicago two months post-Katrina, 13-year-old Davis wrestles with the cultural landscape of a new city and school community while secretly coping with the PTSD of an assault at the Superdome. With her mother still in New Orleans committed to the fight for Black land ownership and her father committed to starting a new life in the Midwest, divorce threatens to further separate a family already torn apart. Will Davis be left hanging in the balance? [hieroglyph] traverses the intersection of environmental racism, sexual violence, and displacement, examining the psychological effects of a state-sanctioned man-made disaster on the most vulnerable members of the Katrina diaspora.
cullud wattah by Erika Dickerson-Despenza
Cast: 5
Genre: drama, political, tragedy
Keyword: environmental racism, African-American family, water justice, Flint water crisis, Black women
It’s been 936 days since Flint has had clean water. Marion, a third generation General Motors employee, is consumed by layoffs at the engine plant. When her sister, Ainee, seeks justice and restitution for lead poisoning, her plan reveals the toxic entanglements between the city and its most powerful industry, forcing their family to confront the past-present-future cost of survival. As lead seeps into their home and their bodies, corrosive memories and secrets rise among them. Will this family ever be able to filter out the truth? CULLUD WATTAH blends form and bends time, diving deep into the poisonous choices of the outside world, the contamination within, and how we make the best choices for our families’ future when there are no real, present options.
2019 - Donnetta Lavinia Grays
Last Night and the Night Before
Donnetta Lavinia Grays– raised in Columbia, South Carolina - is a Brooklyn based playwright and actor. Plays include WHERE WE STAND (Upcoming World Premiere Co-production - WP Theater and Baltimore Centerstage. O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist.), LAST NIGHT AND THE NIGHT BEFORE (World Premiere - Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Kilroys List. Colorado New Play Summit. NNPN Showcase. Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award, O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist.), LAID TO REST (Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow Finalist. O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist. Kilroys List -Honorable Mention. Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep. Space on Ryder Farm Creative Residency.) and THE REVIEW (WP Pipeline Festival. O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist). Alumna of Space on Ryder Farm Working Farm Residency, Time Warner Foundation WP Playwrights Lab, Civilians R&D Group, Actors Studio Playwright/Directors Unit and terraNova Collective’s Groundbreakers Playwright group. Inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. Development with New Harmony Project, Berkeley Rep, Labyrinth Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Portland Stage Company, Pure Theatre, Naked Angels and Classical Theater of Harlem. Commissions with Theaterworks USA, The Public Theater's Mobile Unit, Denver Center and WP Theater. Staff Writer for TV’s Manhunt: Lone Wolf www.gaptoothedgriot.com
Last Night and the Night Before
Donnetta Lavinia Grays– raised in Columbia, South Carolina - is a Brooklyn based playwright and actor. Plays include WHERE WE STAND (Upcoming World Premiere Co-production - WP Theater and Baltimore Centerstage. O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist.), LAST NIGHT AND THE NIGHT BEFORE (World Premiere - Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Kilroys List. Colorado New Play Summit. NNPN Showcase. Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award, O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist.), LAID TO REST (Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow Finalist. O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist. Kilroys List -Honorable Mention. Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep. Space on Ryder Farm Creative Residency.) and THE REVIEW (WP Pipeline Festival. O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist). Alumna of Space on Ryder Farm Working Farm Residency, Time Warner Foundation WP Playwrights Lab, Civilians R&D Group, Actors Studio Playwright/Directors Unit and terraNova Collective’s Groundbreakers Playwright group. Inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. Development with New Harmony Project, Berkeley Rep, Labyrinth Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Portland Stage Company, Pure Theatre, Naked Angels and Classical Theater of Harlem. Commissions with Theaterworks USA, The Public Theater's Mobile Unit, Denver Center and WP Theater. Staff Writer for TV’s Manhunt: Lone Wolf www.gaptoothedgriot.com
2018 - Jessica Huang
The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin
Jessica Huang is a playwright and producer from Minneapolis. She is in the incoming class of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights program at Juilliard. Her work includes The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (History Theatre commission/premiere, 2017 Kilroy’s List), Purple Cloud (Mu Performing Arts premiere), and Zero-Infinity Flight Path. Her plays have been commissioned, developed and/or produced
by Atlantic Theatre Company, Mixed Blood Theatre, TimeLine Theatre Company, The Goodman Theatre, History Theatre, Theater Mu, The Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists, Pillsbury House Theatre, The Minnesota Museum of American Art, Yellow Earth Theatre and many more. She is currently working on Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying, a play about mixed-race identity politics, grief and global warming, commissioned by Mixed Blood Theatre, as well as commissions with Timeline Theatre and History Theatre. She is a 2018 MacDowell Fellow; 2016-17 and 2017- 18 Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow; 2012 Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellow; and has received awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, MRAC/ McKnight, the NEA, and the Hemera Foundation. With a Jerome Travel/Study grant, she will travel to China to research family history and build international connections. Jessica cofounded and co-directs Other Tiger Productions, which has a mission to pursue multidisciplinary collaborations and intentional inclusivity and re-examination of traditional theater practices. More: Jessica-Huang.com
The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin
Jessica Huang is a playwright and producer from Minneapolis. She is in the incoming class of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights program at Juilliard. Her work includes The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (History Theatre commission/premiere, 2017 Kilroy’s List), Purple Cloud (Mu Performing Arts premiere), and Zero-Infinity Flight Path. Her plays have been commissioned, developed and/or produced
by Atlantic Theatre Company, Mixed Blood Theatre, TimeLine Theatre Company, The Goodman Theatre, History Theatre, Theater Mu, The Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists, Pillsbury House Theatre, The Minnesota Museum of American Art, Yellow Earth Theatre and many more. She is currently working on Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying, a play about mixed-race identity politics, grief and global warming, commissioned by Mixed Blood Theatre, as well as commissions with Timeline Theatre and History Theatre. She is a 2018 MacDowell Fellow; 2016-17 and 2017- 18 Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow; 2012 Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellow; and has received awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, MRAC/ McKnight, the NEA, and the Hemera Foundation. With a Jerome Travel/Study grant, she will travel to China to research family history and build international connections. Jessica cofounded and co-directs Other Tiger Productions, which has a mission to pursue multidisciplinary collaborations and intentional inclusivity and re-examination of traditional theater practices. More: Jessica-Huang.com
2017 - Nathan Alan Davis
Nat Turner in Jerusalem
Nathan Alan Davis is a playwright based in New York. His plays include Nat Turner in Jerusalem (NYTW), Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea (NNPN Rolling World Premiere; Steinberg/ATCA New Play Citation), and The Wind and the Breeze (New Harmony Project Residency, Blue Ink Playwriting Award, Lorraine Hansberry Award). He is currently developing projects with The Public Theater, McCarter Theatre, Arena Stage, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Nathan is a Lecturer in Theatre at Princeton University, a Usual Suspect at NYTW, and a 2016 graduate of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. MFA: Indiana University; BFA: University of Illinois.
Nat Turner in Jerusalem
Nathan Alan Davis is a playwright based in New York. His plays include Nat Turner in Jerusalem (NYTW), Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea (NNPN Rolling World Premiere; Steinberg/ATCA New Play Citation), and The Wind and the Breeze (New Harmony Project Residency, Blue Ink Playwriting Award, Lorraine Hansberry Award). He is currently developing projects with The Public Theater, McCarter Theatre, Arena Stage, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Nathan is a Lecturer in Theatre at Princeton University, a Usual Suspect at NYTW, and a 2016 graduate of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. MFA: Indiana University; BFA: University of Illinois.
2016 - MIA CHUNG
You For Me For You
Mia Chung’s play You for Me For You had a UK premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in December 2015 and is published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. The play premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre (in association with Ma-Yi Theatre and the NEA) and subsequently produced by Company One, Portland Playhouse, and Mu Performing Arts/Guthrie Theater. In Spring 2017, the play will run at InterAct Theatre. Her other plays include Catch as Catch Can, This Exquisite Corpse, and Skin in the Game. Her work has been supported by awards, commissions, fellowships, and residencies including Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor, Civilians’ R&D Group, Hedgebrook, JAW, LAByrinth, Playwrights Realm, South Coast Rep, Southern Rep, Stella Adler Studio, and TCG. She is a member of New Dramatists, Ma-Yi’s Writers Lab, and Huntington Theatre’s Playwright Fellows. She attended Yale; University of Dublin, Trinity College; and Brown.
You For Me For You
Mia Chung’s play You for Me For You had a UK premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in December 2015 and is published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. The play premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre (in association with Ma-Yi Theatre and the NEA) and subsequently produced by Company One, Portland Playhouse, and Mu Performing Arts/Guthrie Theater. In Spring 2017, the play will run at InterAct Theatre. Her other plays include Catch as Catch Can, This Exquisite Corpse, and Skin in the Game. Her work has been supported by awards, commissions, fellowships, and residencies including Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor, Civilians’ R&D Group, Hedgebrook, JAW, LAByrinth, Playwrights Realm, South Coast Rep, Southern Rep, Stella Adler Studio, and TCG. She is a member of New Dramatists, Ma-Yi’s Writers Lab, and Huntington Theatre’s Playwright Fellows. She attended Yale; University of Dublin, Trinity College; and Brown.
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2015
Jessica Dickey The Guard 
1993
Edwin Sanchez 1990
Anthony Clarvoe |
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