EXCLUSIVE: The celebrated Yale Drama Sequence Prize for rising playwrights has introduced eight contenders chosen for its first-ever quick checklist.
Prize organizers opted this 12 months to announce the quick checklist, fairly than the normal announcement of the successful play solely, to “higher replicate the pluralism of its applicant pool, and to supply a broader context in regards to the state of the American Theater on the rising degree.”
Additionally for the primary time, the play picks had been chosen by a six-member judging panel fairly than one playwright. Previous winners had been chosen by such playwrights as Edward Albee, David Hare, Marsha Norman and Paula Vogel.
Every of this 12 months’s six judges are all previous winners of the Yale prize, and every learn greater than 250 playwriting contenders.
The eight performs chosen for the quick checklist are:
- Jordan Ramirez Puckett’s A Driving Beat
- Lilly Camp’s All Eight
- Matthew Paul Olmos’ a house what howls (or the home that was ravine)
- Seayoung Yim’s Jar of Fats
- Candrice Jones’ A Medusa Thread
- Libby Heily’s Midnight Exhibiting
- Aaron Coleman’s Inform Me I’m Attractive on the Finish of the World
- Iraisa Ann Reilly’s The Jersey Satan is a Papi Chulo
The quick checklist was compiled from greater than 1,500 submissions from 56 nations. The winner of the 2022 Prize will probably be introduced at a later date, with excerpts of the eight performs to be out there for studying on the New Play Trade web site starting on February 27.
The members of the judges panel are 2008 prize winner Neil Wechsler; 2009 winner Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig; 2010 winner Virginia Grise; 2017 winner Jacqueline Goldfinger; 2018 winner Leah Nanako Winkler; and 2021 winner Rachel Lynett.
In a joint assertion, the panelists stated, “We had been overwhelmed by the extent of expertise and ingenuity amongst the submissions, and there was merely no approach that we might have the ability to replicate the sheer range of labor by selecting one successful play. Because the theater world struggles to grow to be ever extra inclusive, we hope this Quick Record serves to alert the general public to a large cross-section of rising playwrights who collectively symbolize a large subject of various backgrounds, points-of-view, and inventive impulses. What all of them share is a dedication to the theatrical artform and a knack for creating wildly compelling work.”
The Yale Drama Sequence Prize, now in its fifteenth 12 months, is offered in cooperation with Yale College Press and is solely sponsored by the David Charles Horn Basis. The winner receives the David Charles Horn Prize of $10,000, in addition to publication of the successful play by Yale College Press and a staged studying.
