Gunderson and THE BOOK OF WILL Win Top Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award

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.

American Theatre Critics Announce Steinberg/ATCA New Play Finalists

The American Theatre Critics Association has released the names of the six finalists for the 2018 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, which spotlights playwrights for professionally produced work premiering outside New York City. The Steinberg/ATCA Awards hand out $40,00 each year, making these awards the largest national new play program of its kind.

This year's finalists are The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson, Cry It Out by Molly Smith Metzler, Linda Vista by Tracy Letts, The Minutes by Tracy Letts, Objects in the Mirror by Charles Smith, and The Wolf at the End of the Block by Ike Holter. Chicago is strongly represented in this group, with two plays from Letts that premiered at Steppenwolf, Smith's play from the Goodman Theatre, and Holter's play, which was presented by Teatro Vista at Victory Gardens.

Here's how the ATCA committee describes the plays chosen:

The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson, about the efforts of Shakespeare's contemporaries to preserve his words after his death, "fires on all cylinders" according to one panelist. Said another, it "wrestles with big questions: Why we create and how we deal with death? What constitutes a legacy? And how a surpassing love for something bigger can make every sacrifice worth it." It's "all the more impressive given that we know how the story will end." "And it's funny — genuinely funny — in a way that feels contemporary and yet not cynical." The Book of Will had its world premiere at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Cry It Out by Molly Smith Metzler focuses on the bonds and barriers between two new mothers across a backyard and across class differences. According to panel members, it is "heartbreakingly original in wrestling with issues of female friendship and class and privilege while still being a story about two people one quickly feels strongly about." "Their challenges come across as very real and accessible without being trivialized." Cry It Out premiered at the Humana Festival.

Linda Vista by Tracy Letts focuses on "a man-child who is lonely and wants to be loved — while remaining too immature to do the work involved in making that happen." With, according to a panelist, some of the "smartest, funniest dialogue of any play this year, it also features female roles exceptionally fresh and well crafted." "Letts runs it out of control and then brings it back," said another. It features, "smart observations on marriage, fatherhood, and aging" and, noted yet another, "It's like getting smacked with a metal ruler while someone's telling jokes." Linda Vista premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

The Minutes, also by Tracy Letts, reads like "this is Grover's Corners and Winesburg, Ohio through the eyes of Shirley Jackson." It's "a very weird roller coaster ride" through an absurd town council meeting that leads to "a magnificent tribal reveal soaked in the saddest truth about humanity." "I could see where this would be an actor's and director's dream with a WOW finish." The Minutes also premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Objects in the Mirror by Charles Smith "compellingly takes us into the mindset of the masses of refugees fleeing wars and other violence and their struggle against great odds to survive and escape." It's about both "the price of immigration, and the importance of identity, with a second act that feeds on the first act in clever ways but takes us in a new direction." "I was also moved," said one panelist, "by the identity crisis at the heart of the play—the hunger to reclaim a self and name that no longer belong to you." It conveys "a great deal about how worlds apart people can be, how different their ideas of how to help." Objects in the Mirror premiered at Chicago's Goodman Theatre.

The Wolf at the End of the Block by Ike Holter is, according to one panelist, "a play I can't get out of my head, from one of the most exciting emerging voices in American theater." It "melds gorgeous, often comedic dialogue into a very dark reality" in "a play that matters." Centered on a beating outside of a Chicago bar, it's "honest about how flawed the would-be heroes of the piece are — refreshing, given the amount of paint-by-numbers agitprop out there right now." Presented by Teatro Vista, The Wolf at the End of the Block premiered at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater.

These six finalists were selected from eligible scripts recommended by ATCA members from across the country.  To read about the history of the Steinberg/ATCA awards and see past winners, click here.

The top award of $25,000 and two citations of $7,500 each, plus commemorative plaques, will be presented April 7 at the 2018 Humana Festival of American Play at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Plan Ahead: Plays and Ticket Info for 2017 Humana Festival of New American Plays

The 41st annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville has announced its lineup for spring 2017. The Humana Festival is probably the best-known New Play Festival in the country, launching works like D. L. Coburn's The Gin Game and Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart in its early years and Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate and Lucas Hnath's The Christians more recently. Directors, producers, literary managers, scholars and a whole lot of theater critics attend every year to see what's new before the hottest Humana plays show up in major theaters from New York to LA and Chicago in between.

If you're interested in attending one of the four weekends between March 17 and April 9, ticket packages are now on sale. Options range from world premieres of three full-length plays in the First Look Weekend March 17 to 19 to four plays, a keynote address and a panel discussion during Discover Weekend March 24 to 26; a five or six play package plus "a presentation by a leader in American theatre and more" for Ovation Week March 31 to April 2; and a five, six or seven play package, including brand new ten-minute plays and a showcase written for Actors Theatre's "professional training company," during Encore Week April 5 to 7. There are special options for college and university theater faculty and students, audience members under 35, and industry professionals. Check out all the details here.

And if you purchase one of those ticket packages, what will you be seeing? The 2017 schedule of full-length plays includes I Now Pronounce by Tasha Gordon-Solomon, directed by Stephen Brackett and opening March 1; We're Gonna Be Okay by Basil Kreimendahl, directed by Lisa Peterson and opening March 7; Cry It Out by Molly Smith Metzler, directed by Davis McCallum and opening March 10; Recent Alien Abductions by by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, directed by Actors Theatre Artistic Director Les Waters and opening March 17; Airness by Chelsea Marcantel, directed by Associate Artistic Director Meredith McDonough and opening March 24; and The Many Deaths of Nathan Stubblefield, with pieces written by Jeff Augustin, Sarah DeLappe, Claire Kiechel and Ramiz Monself to be performed by the actors of the professional training company, directed by Eric Hoff and also opening March 24.

That last offering involves stories of inspiration and invention from Kentucky's "unsung dreamers," while the others cover an air guitar competition, babies and new moms, bomb shelters and the Cuban Missile Crisis, a lost episode of The X Files, and a wedding with a great deal of drama. If you're trying to figure out which is which, the titles of the plays should be a hint, but I encourage you to click on the links under those titles to get all the details.

This year's ten-minute plays will be revealed later. Last year, we got that news in February. Stay tuned to find out who's who and what's what if ten-minute plays are your thing.

But in the meantime... Ticket packages are now available, with "early bird" discounts in place if you book before February 10, 2017. Just a tip: If you want the full array of plays, including the ten-minute plays, on the last weekend, things tend to fill up fast, so you might want to act now.

Susan Smith Blackburn Finalists Announced

The 2012 finalists for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize, which carries an award of $20,000 to the winning playwright, have been announced. They include one Irish, five American and four British playwrights.

This year's finalists are:

Johnna Adams (U.S.), for "Gidion’s Knot," submitted by The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

Alice Birch (U.K.), for "Many Moons," submitted by Theatre 503 in London.

Madeleine George (U.S.), for "Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England," submitted by Clubbed Thumb in New York.

Jennifer Haley (U.S.), for "The Nether," submitted by Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles.

Nancy Harris (Ireland), for "No Romance," submitted by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

Zinnie Harris (U.K.), for "The Wheel," submitted by National Theatre of Scotland.

Molly Smith Metzler (U.S.), for "Close Up Space," submitted by Manhattan Theatre Club.

Meg Miroshnik (U.S.), for "The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls," submitted by Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.

Jaki McCarrick (U.K.), for "Belfast Girls," submitted by King’s Head Theatre in London.

Alexis Zegerman (U.K.), for "The Steingolds," submitted by Playful Productions of London.

The Blackburn prize is awarded annually to "recognize women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre." Previous finalists Margaret Edson, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Paula Vogel and Wendy Wasserstein went on to win Pulitzer Prizes after their Blackburn honors.

Plays are nominated by professional theaters, and nominated scripts are then read by an international panel of judges. The 2012 judging panel includes familiar names like Martha Lavey, actress and Artistic Director of Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago; actress Frances McDormand, who won the Best Actress Oscar for "Fargo;" Ben Power, Associate Director of Britain's National Theatre; and actress Imogen Stubbs, who has played Desdemona for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Stella opposite Jessica Lange in "Streetcar," as well as appearing as Viola in the 1996 film version of "Twelfth Night."

For more information about the nominated playwrights, click here. You can also read what judge Randy Gener (an award-winning writer, editor and critic) thought about the process here. He's not telling who won, though! That will be announced in London on February 28th.

The art you see with this post is an original Willem DeKooning lithograph created just for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. The winning playwright gets the lithograph in addition to the $20,000 cash prize.