Winners


2012
Donnetta Lavinia Grays

Donnetta Lavinia Grays -- raised in Columbia, South Carolina -- is a Brooklyn-based playwright and actor whose writing credits include WHERE WE STAND (Lucille Lortel Nominee, Drama League Nominee, 3X AUDELCO Nominee, World Premiere Co-production, WP Theater and Baltimore Centerstage. O’Neill Center National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist), WARRIORS DON’T CRY (Theaterworks USA/Bushnell commission), LAST NIGHT AND THE NIGHT BEFORE (World Premiere, Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Kilroys List. Colorado New Play Summit. National New Play Network Showcase. Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award Winner.  THE NEW NORMAL and THE COWBOY IS DYING. Donnetta is a recipient of the Whiting Award for Drama, the Helen Merrill Playwright Award, Lilly Award, National Theater Conference Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, and the inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. Her work has been previously developed with, Hedgebrook (*Covid Class), New Harmony Project, Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Labyrinth Theater Company, New York Theater Workshop, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Portland Stage Company, Pure Theatre Company, [the claque], Naked Angels, Classical Theater of Harlem, Slant Theater Project, terraNova Collective, and TOSOS.

 

In 2018 Donnetta founded Gap Toothed Griot, LLC as a home for her particular brand of storytelling. Donnetta - as GTG - is currently under commission with True Love Productions, Steppenwolf, The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and WP Theater. For television she has been staffed on Spectrum Original/Lionsgate’s "Manhunt", "Y: The Last Man" for FX Network/Color Force, "Joe vs. Carole" starring Kate McKinnon for NBC Universal and is currently a Co-producer on Seconds for AMC+

2013

Jack MacCarthy

Jack MacCarthy (he/they) is a non-binary writer and creatrix, currently making the transition from theatre to film and TV. They write funny, devastating stories about women and/or queer and/or trans people, all of whom are simultaneously sympathetic and destructive. The New York Times called his work “a lot of fun,” and Kate Bornstein said it was “f*cking brilliant.” His TV pilot, “Chosen Families,” was a semifinalist for the Warner Bros. Television Pilot Award. Jack's plays have been performed everywhere from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the New York City subway and beyond. For eight years, Jack ran Caps Lock Theatre, an award-winning, often site-specific, scrappy af theater company in New York. Jack is a critically acclaimed YA novelist with Squad (published by FSG, 2019), which was a Washington Blade Springs Arts 2019 Book List Pick and Barnes & Noble Most Anticipated LGBTQAP YA Book of 2019 (“won me over” -NPR). He is also a proud birth mother; his true story of giving birth to a child he placed for adoption was the subject of an Amazon Original commission, “My Boy, Their Son,” which was #1 in Adoption, as well as the award-winning solo show Baby Mama (“★★★★★” -Broadway Baby). They moved to Los Angeles just before the pandemic hit, where he lives with his cat Sophie. They are Communications Manager of The Outwords Archive, an LGBTQIA2S+ storytelling nonprofit, and he performs comedy on the internet with his Ruby sketch team, Sleepless. They are represented by Circle of Confusion. Get to know him at jackmaccarthy.com!

2014

Kevin R. Free

Kevin R. Free is a multidisciplinary artist whose work as a storyteller has been showcased many places, including Target Margin, the Where Project, QED: A Place for Storytelling; on the Moth Mainstage, Dana Rossi’s The Soundtrack Series, and Drunken! Careening! Writers!

 

His full-length plays are Face Value (Henry Street Settlement Playwright’s Project Grant; (Not) Just a Day Like Any Other (written & performed with Christopher Borg, Jeffrey Cranor, and Eevin Hartsough; recipient, 2009 NY IT Award for Outstanding Ensemble); and A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, or TRIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS, and You Are in An Open Field (written & performed with Eevin Hartsough, Marta Rainer, Carl Riehl, and Adam Smith); Night of the Living N-Word!! (FringeNYC); AM I DEAD? The Untrue Narrative of Anatomical Lewis, The Slave (Commission from Flux Theatre Ensemble); BALBOA IS NOT DROWNING. His ten-minute plays include …in which Bishop Eddie Long loses a battle with his demons… (Sticky at the Bowery Poetry Club, JACK) and PORTAL, or Metaphorical Tricycle (The Fire This Time Festival), and Turn This Motha Out (with Prayer) (48 Hours in Harlem, inspired by Tyler Perry’s “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”). He is an alumnus of the New York Neo-Futurists, with whom he wrote and performed regularly in Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes) between 2007 and 2011. His work has been published by Commonplace Books (“What it Means To Be A Grown Up: The Complete and Definitive Answer”) and at www.indietheaternow.com. He was named one of NYTheatre.com’s 15 people of the year, because of his “outstanding, noteworthy contributions to the New York theatre scene.”

2015

Andrea Alton

Andrea Alton is a New York based actor, writer, comic/improviser. As a solo performer, Andrea has written and performed four solo-shows including White (Trash) Wedding (The PIT), The F*cking World According to Molly (FringeNYC/TerraNOVA Solo Festival/Dublin Theatre Festival), Possum Creek (FringeNYC) and Molly’s World (FrigidNY). She’s also written two comedies with Allen Warnock including Carl & Shelly; Best Friends Forever (FringeNYC & commercial run) and A Microwaved Burrito Filled with E. coli (FringeNYC). She is the creator of the popular downtown character Molly “Equality” Dykeman and has performed the character to sold-out houses all over New York City including The Laurie Beechman Theatre, FringeNYC, Gotham Comedy Club, Dixon Place, UCB, The PIT, Emerging Artists, Frigid NY, Comix, NY Sketch Fest, among others. National performances include the San Francisco Comedy Fest, DC Sketch Fest, Chicago Sketch Fest and Provincetown, MA during Women's Week. International performances include the Dublin Gay International Theatre Festival in Ireland and the Toronto Sketch Fest.

As a playwright, her plays have been produced across the country and internationally with notable performances in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Florida, and Ireland.


2016
 Victoria Libertore

VICTORIA LIBERTORE is an actress, writer, curator, emcee and teacher. She is the creator of seven solo shows: "Camille: The Forgotten Artist", "stalk(her)", "The Should Dream", "My Journey of Decay", GIRL MEAT, "No Need for Seduction" and This Is My Last Attempt at Fame." She has performed her original work throughout NYC in venues such as BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Carolines on Broadway, Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, Joyce Soho and PS122 as well as in Boston, Chicago, Montreal, Philadelphia, Provincetown, Toronto and Washington D.C. Libertore teaches performance workshops incorporating her original, archetypal energy technique. Libertore is passionate about encouraging other artists to create their own work and has curated dozens of local and a few international artists with backgrounds in performance, variety arts, music, comedy and dance. She has emceed throughout New York City in clubs, at events, on the boardwalk, in parks and at private parties as her incomparable faux Liza Minnelli where she utilizes 

her improvisational skills to make "people laugh so hard that their faces hurt." Libertore was a 2008 - 2010 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Theater Artist in Residence. She is the 2016 recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award.

2017

J.Stephen Brantley

J.Stephen Brantley’s plays include Billy Baal, The Emilies, Eightythree Down, Furbelow, The Jamb, Shruti Gupta Can Totally Deal, and The Wedded Bachelors Of Second Garrote. Theatre 167’s production of his play Pirira was named Outstanding Premiere Production at the 2014 New York Innovative Theatre Awards before transferring Off-Broadway, and then opening regionally at Luna Stage. He has also written in collaboration with Theatre 167 on The Jackson Heights Trilogy plays and The Church Of Why Not. Brantley’s acclaimed one-man autobiographical ‘recovery cabaret’ Chicken-Fried Ciccone: A Twangy True Tale Of Transformation, directed by Obie-winner David Drake, played to audiences in New York, Dublin, Provincetown, and East Hampton.

Brantley is an eight-time New York Innovative Theatre Award nominee, recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award, and an  O’Neill semifinalist.

You can download many of Brantley's plays from New Play Exchange. J.Stephen Brantley is the recipient of the 2017 Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation. View his rousing  acceptance speech here.

2018 Gina Femia

Gina Femia's work has been seen/developed at The Goodman Theater, MCC Theater, Playwrights Horizons, EST, Page 73, Rivendell, New Georges, CTG, Theater of NOTE, Panndora Productions, among others. Selected honors include The Kilroys List, Leah Ryan Prize, Doric Wilson Award, the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award and the Neukom Award in Playwriting. Gina's work has been nominated for a Drama League Award (my pierced ears with AFO's Solo Shorts) as well as a New York Innovative Theater Award. Gina is a current Core Writer with the Playwrights Center, and an Alum of EST Youngblood, Page73's Interstate 73, Pipeline Theatre’s PlayLab, New Georges' Audrey Residency, the Ingram New Play Lab at Nashville Rep and Parsnip Ship's Radio Roots Writer's Group. Gina’s a New Georges Affiliated Artist and has received residencies with Page73, Powerhouse, NTI at the O’Neill, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and Fresh Ground Pepper. Gina's debut YA novel, Alondra, comes out in April 2023.

2019

Barbara Kahn

BARBARA KAHN, actor, playwright, director, acting and playwriting coach, has performed and her plays presented in the U.S. and Europe. Theater for the New City has been the primary NYC home for Barbara’s plays since 1994. Barbara has directed in New York, Paris, and at the National Theatre in London. Among her many awards: the Torch of Hope Award, following past recipients Terrence McNally, August Wilson and A.R. Gurney; the joint Robert Chesley Playwriting Award/Wurlitzer Foundation Residency; the James R. Quirk Award for the Performing Arts; and the Acker Award for her work in downtown theater. With Jackie S. Freeman, co-author of the lyrics to “Actions are the Music of the Free,” music by Jennifer Giering, performed at the United Nations Tribute to Dame Nita Barrow. Named: one of 2015’s “100 Women we Love” (GO! Magazine). Member: AEA, SAG/AFTRA, The Dramatists Guild, 365 Women a Year.


2020

Lacuna due to Pandemic

2021

Chris Weikel

Chris Weikel was one of the first four students to graduate from the Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA in playwriting program at Hunter College, studying under Tina Howe and Mark Bly. Weikel participated in the Kennedy Center ACTF/NNPN MFA Playwrights Workshop in 2012. His play SECRET IDENTITY was featured during “Playwright’s Week” at the Lark Play Development Center in 2012, and produced by TOSOS in residence at The Flea in 2019. His PENNY PENNIWORTH, which according to The New York Times "deserves to become a staple" was produced by Emerging Artists Theatre Company (EAT) in 2009 and 2010. It was recently mounted by Titanic theatre Company in Boston and has been published by Dramatic Publishing. His PIG TALE: AN URBAN FAERIE STORY was produced off-off-Broadway by The Other Side of Silence (TOSOS), as well as at the Absolut Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival in 2009. Weikel is a judge-at-large for the New York Innovative Theatre (NYIT) Awards and a regular contributor to Drunken! Careening! Writers! at KGB. He was a 2008-09 Dramatist Guild Fellow, the 2007 recipient of the Robert Chesley Award for emerging gay playwrights, the 2008 recipient of the Irv Zarkower Award, a 2011 recipient of the Rita and Burton Goldberg Award from Hunter College, a 2013 NYFA Fellowship grantee, and the 2014 recipient of the NNPN Smith Prize Commission for political theatre. The resulting play, THE WORD FROM KAMPALA was workshopped by InterAct Theater in Philadelphia in 2016. In recognition of his longstanding collaboration with New York’s oldest and longest producing LGBTQ+ theatre company, Weikel and TOSOS were recipients of a 2018 Dramatists Guild Writers Alliance Grant. He is the recipient of the 2021 Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award.