Over the weekend, the American Theatre Critics Association announced the 2018 winners of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Awards, which shine a spotlight (and reward) playwrights for professionally produced work premiering outside New York City. With the top award and two citations, the Steinberg/ATCA Awards give out a total of $40,00 each year, making the awards the largest national new play program of its kind. Every year, they are announced on the Saturday of the last weekend of Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays.
Playwright Lauren Gunderson continued what has been a banner year, as she was the recipient of the the top award of $25,000 and a commemorative plaque for her play The Book of Will, which premiered at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts last year. Gunderson's scenario takes place after the death of Shakespeare, when two of his friends--Henry Condell and John Heminges--attempt to preserve his plays for posterity. As the Denver Center frames it, "the two actors are determined to compile the first Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg and band together to get it done. Lauren Gunderson weaves a hilarious and heartfelt story inspired by the true story of Shakespeare’s First Folio."
In a world with so many Shakespeare festivals eager to produce work that involves him* and a playwright with a good deal of buzz right now, it seems likely you will see The Book of Will somewhere near you very soon. The Book of Will has been published by Dramatists Play Service.
Molly Smith Metzler's Cry It Out, an insightful look at how new motherhood affects three very different women (and one man), took a $7500 cash prize, along with Ike Holter's The Wolf at the end of the Block, a searing drama about a crime outside a boarded-up Chicago bar that underlines the jagged gulf between people of color and the police. Cry It Out premiered at last year's Humana Festival, while The Wolf at the End of the Block was presented by Teatro Vista at Victory Gardens Theater. You can find Cry It Out at Dramatic Publishing, while The Wolf at the End of the Block is scheduled to be published by Northwestern University Press along with Holter's entire seven-play Chicago cycle.
The other finalists were Linda Vista and The Minutes, both by Tracy Letts, and Objects in the Mirror by Charles Smith.
At the same event at the Humana Festival, Chelsea Marcantel's Airness, a breezy and energetic look at an air guitar competition, was named this year's winner of the M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award recognizing an emerging playwright.
*For recent work involving Shakespeare as a person, see: Lee Hall's Shakespeare in Love, coming to the Illinois Shakespeare Festival this year, after productions in London, the Stratford Festival in Canada, Chicago, etc.; Timothy Findley's Elizabeth Rex, a smash at Illinois Shakes in 2014 after it, too, played at the Stratford Festival and Chicago Shakes; and Bill Cain's Equivocation, a previous Steinberg/ATCA winner from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Playwright Lauren Gunderson continued what has been a banner year, as she was the recipient of the the top award of $25,000 and a commemorative plaque for her play The Book of Will, which premiered at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts last year. Gunderson's scenario takes place after the death of Shakespeare, when two of his friends--Henry Condell and John Heminges--attempt to preserve his plays for posterity. As the Denver Center frames it, "the two actors are determined to compile the first Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg and band together to get it done. Lauren Gunderson weaves a hilarious and heartfelt story inspired by the true story of Shakespeare’s First Folio."
In a world with so many Shakespeare festivals eager to produce work that involves him* and a playwright with a good deal of buzz right now, it seems likely you will see The Book of Will somewhere near you very soon. The Book of Will has been published by Dramatists Play Service.
The other finalists were Linda Vista and The Minutes, both by Tracy Letts, and Objects in the Mirror by Charles Smith.
At the same event at the Humana Festival, Chelsea Marcantel's Airness, a breezy and energetic look at an air guitar competition, was named this year's winner of the M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award recognizing an emerging playwright.
*For recent work involving Shakespeare as a person, see: Lee Hall's Shakespeare in Love, coming to the Illinois Shakespeare Festival this year, after productions in London, the Stratford Festival in Canada, Chicago, etc.; Timothy Findley's Elizabeth Rex, a smash at Illinois Shakes in 2014 after it, too, played at the Stratford Festival and Chicago Shakes; and Bill Cain's Equivocation, a previous Steinberg/ATCA winner from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
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