Marsha Norman’s Choice of Yale Drama Prize Winners: A Problem

[AW19]

I don’t mean to be contentious or unfair, but has anyone noticed the sole winners Marsha Norman picked for the Yale Prize, in her two years as judge, were her playwriting students at Juilliard? The plays go through early readers first, but the judge is responsible for choosing the winner. The odds of getting into Juilliard (four to five out of 400) are much higher than winning the Yale Prize (one out of more than 1400). What are the chances Marsha Norman’s students would win the Yale Prize not once, but twice, in the two years she was judge?

The Yale prize is for EMERGING playwrights from around the world who write in English. Many emerging playwrights dream of winning it. When Edward Albee chose a sixty-year-old playwright, John Austin Connolly, from Ireland, or David Hare chose Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig in the US, they were administering the Yale prize in a fair, unbiased way. It seems unfair and disingenuous that Marsha Norman chose only her students as winners of this coveted prize: a slap in the face to the hopes of emerging playwrights around the world.

Please don't respond nastily to this post, I'm simply trying to point out a possible injustice. I know the playwrights she chose are excellent writers, and probably good people, and Ms. Norman must care about her students a lot. But given how many other excellent playwrights submitted, there appears to be a case of conflict of interest, that should have at least been addressed by Ms. Norman, out of respect to playwrights around the world who turned in plays hoping to win the Yale prize.