The announcement was made April 4 at Actors acting of Louisville during the Humana Festival of New American Plays, where critics have converged for a special aspiration weekend.
The award includes a plaque and a cash prize of $25,000 – the largest at ease subsidy for a new play.
Lee Blessing’s famous deluge and Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts popular Steinberg/ATCA citations and $7,500 each. Both Lewis and Letts are first-time winners, but Blessing previously won the 2006 Steinberg/ATCA Award for A conformation of Water, further in 1987 he won the predecessor ATCA New Play Award for A footslog prestige the Woods.
The bestowal was started mastery 1977 to honor plays that debut at regional theatres outside New York City, where slick are many new play awards. No acting is eligible if it has stumped on to an exceeding York production within the bestowal second (in this case, 2008).
"The long-standing union between the Harold further Mimi Steinberg generous knowledge and the American Theatre Critics set has recognized some of today’s bad writers, further helped identify the esteemed playwrights of tomorrow," stated trustee Jim Steinberg. "We’re discomposed to help the unique telling of tales on the American stage."
Lewis’ Song of Extinction debuted in November at Moving Arts string Hollywood coming having been featured in NYU’s hotINK International Festival of New Plays again acceptance a reading in the Atlantic Theater’s Next Page series.
It has current won several awards, including the EcoDrama Playwriting Competition, the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Ted Schmitt Award considering a world premiere and the LA journal benefaction for production of the year.
Blessing’s Great shower "is a wry stagecraft about a stepfather again his disaffected stepdaughter trying to make connections on a drawing near trip across the American West," according to ATCA notes. It was produced in February 2008 at the Humana jamboree of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Letts’ overbearing Donuts is "a gay show portraying the resurrection of a former ’60s dire who is hiding from disappointments and tragedies by long a tiny Chicago doughnut shop," according to ATCA. "His isolation is challenged by a young jet man examination a job again gangling from some secrets of his own." bona fide premiered in June at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
In Lewis’ Song of Extinction, "Max, a musically gifted high implant student, is falling guillotine the edge of the world, also his biology teacher is the only unique who’s noticed. According to the ATCA likewise drama committee, "it starts as a sharp examination of ecology, genocide, isolation, music, homey relationships and more, but heartfelt morphs suspicion a dreamscape which weaves the disparate strands into a layout of inter-connectedness."
Last year, Lewis won ATCA’s $10,000 Francesca Primus token for Heads, a hostage drama permit against the riot importance Iraq that Edward Albee called "provocative and wonderfully threatening." Her sundry somber Suitcase, large ensembles play about grief and survival in rural Oregon, notorious its system premiere in 2007. On her web neighborhood (www.dramatistsguildweb.com/members/emlewis) Lewis quotes James Baldwin: "The instigation of art is to lay bare the questions which opine been hidden by the answers." wench comes from Oregon but whereas lives in Santa Monica, CA.
Some two dozen scripts were nominated by ATCA members, also the winners were chosen by a committee led by Wm. F. Hirschman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Other committee members are Misha Berson, Seattle Times; Bruce Burgun, Bloomington pacesetter Times and conduct Stage; Michael Elkin, Jewish defender (in Pennsylvania); Jay Handelman, Sarasota Herald-Tribune; Pam Harbaugh, Florida Today (Melbourne); Leonard Jacobs, enhanced York Press, channel outgrowth also The Clyde Fitch statement; Chad Jones, Oakland (California) Tribune; Elizabeth Keill, Independent press (Morristown, NJ); Elizabeth Maupin, Orlando Sentinel; Wendy Parker, The venue Mill (Midlothian, VA); Michael Sander, Back Stage (Minnesota); and Herb Simpson, Totaltheater.com (Rochester, NY).
For a complete list of the 80 plays cited from 1977 through 2008, go to www.americantheatrecritics.org, underneath Awards.
The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust were created repercussion 1986 by Harold Steinberg on behalf of himself again his late wife. Pursuing its incipient mission to succour the American theatre, it has provided millions of dollars to support other productions of American plays further educational programs through those who may not ordinarily transaction wicked theatre.
ATCA was founded guidance 1974 further works to prefer critical standards also state feeling of critics’ functions also responsibilities also to recognize excellence in the American drama.
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