The American Theatre Critics just released the following:
The American Theatre Critics Association has selected six finalists for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for the best scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2011.
The top award of $25,000 and two citations of $7,500 each, plus commemorative plaques, will be presented March 31 at Actors Theatre of Louisville during the Humana Festival of New American Plays. At $40,000, Steinberg/ATCA is the largest national new play award of its kind.
The finalists:
“Annapurna,”
“Edith Can Shoot Things And Hit Them,” by A. Rey Pamatmat, bowed last spring at the Humana Festival. This moving, bittersweet play portrays an especially untraditional family made up of three young misfits: a brilliant 16-year-old and his precocious 12-year-old sister abandoned by their widowed father to raise themselves, and the brother’s lover who runs from a family unaccepting of his nascent homosexuality. Their fanciful bonding, resilience and realization of their limitations results in an uplifting and meaningful comic drama infused with empathy and wry humor.
“On The Spectrum,” by Ken LaZebnik, depicts a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome passing as “typical” after years of mainstreaming and therapy. He connects with a woman who proudly champions her autism as a difference, not a disorder. This love story reveals the contradictions between finding success as oneself and finding success on the world’s terms, and the conflict between the desire for acceptance and the desire for achievement. Among the choices: live in a fantastic world of the mind or join the more mundane society that typecasts you as your illness. The work premiered in November at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis.
“Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World,” by Yussef El Guindi, is a gentle romantic comedy wrapped around a serious examination of issues facing today’s new immigrants, dilemmas that resonate for every generation’s newcomers. An Egyptian immigrant who drives a cab strikes up a romance with a quirky American-born waitress, but the clash of cultures is only the hook El Guindi uses to explore the diversity of opinions even within one ethnic group as they struggle with assimilation and a newly-minted belief in the promise of the American Dream. It premiered in June at ACT Repertory in Seattle.
“A Twist of Water,” by Caitlin Montanye Parrish, is a sensitive drama of domestic relationships seamlessly fused with an examination of social issues. A single white father tries to come to terms with his black, adopted teenage daughter after the death of his longtime husband, the man whom the daughter considers her real Dad. When the girl seeks out her birth mother, the father’s relationship with her is pressed to the breaking point. This play speaks about forgiveness, about knowing our parents as human beings, about failing our children in spite of our every effort, about loss and love and the triumph of courage that allows us to go on with our lives. The play premiered in February at the Route 66 Theatre in Chicago.
“Water By The Spoonful” by Quiara Alegria Hudes, was first produced in October by Hartford Stage. A soldier returns from the Iraqi war and struggles to put aside the demons that haunt him. His mother, a recovering heroin addict, battles her own demons with other recovering addicts in an Internet chat room. The boundaries of love, family and community are stretched across time, generations and cyberspace as birth families splinter and online families collide.
These six finalists were selected from 27 eligible scripts submitted by ATCA members. They were evaluated by a committee of 12 theater critics, led by chairman Wm. F. Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com. Other committee members are Misha Berson, Seattle Times; Bruce Burgun, Bloomington Herald Times and Back Stage (Ind.); Michael Elkin, Jewish Exponent (Pa.); Pam Harbaugh, Florida Today (Melbourne); Elizabeth Keill, Independent Press (Morristown, N.J.); Jerry Kraft, aislesay.com (Port Angeles, Wash.); Julius Novick, freelancer (New York City); Wendy Parker, The Village Mill (Midlothian, Va.); David Sheward, Back Stage (New York); Herb Simpson, totaltheater.com and capitalcriticscircle.com (Geneseo, N.Y.) and Tim Treanor, DC Theater Scene (Washington, D.C.)
“Despite vanishing government support and faltering donations, America’s regional theaters have persevered and prevailed as this country’s preeminent crucible for vibrant and important new works,” said Hirschman. “The recommended plays encompass a dizzyingly wide range of styles and themes, produced by a cadre of experienced and novice playwrights who are inarguable proof that theater remains a vital and relevant art form in the 21st century.”
Since the inception of ATCA’s New Play Award, honorees have included Lanford Wilson, Marsha Norman, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Mac Wellman, Adrienne Kennedy, Donald Margulies, Lynn Nottage, Moises Kaufman and Craig Lucas. Last year’s honoree was Bill Cain for “9 Circles.” For a full list of 35 years of winners and runners-up, go to www.americantheatrecritics.org and click on Steinberg-ATCA under Awards.
For more information on ATCA, visit www.americantheatrecritics.org.