Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee has selected "Grenadine" by Neil Wechsler as the recipient of the 2008 Yale Drama Series Award, an annual award inaugurated in 2007 that supports emerging playwrights, jointly sponsored by Yale University Press and Yale Repertory Theatre.
Playwright Neil Wechsler will be awarded the David C. Horn Prize of $10,000. Grenadine will be published by Yale University Press and receive a reading at Yale Repertory Theatre. The award will be formally presented at a ceremony at The Ritz-Carlton New York, Battery Park on Sunday, September 14, 2008. A reading of the play will be given by Yale Rep in New Haven on Monday, September 15.
Edward Albee's plays which have been performed in London and on Broadway include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Seascape, A Delicate Balance, The Lady from Dubuque, Three Tall Women, The Play About The Baby and The Goat or Who is Sylvia?
Edward Albee said "The Yale Drama Series contest submissions seem in quality a notch above many others. There is the usual dross, and the frequent skillfully dreadful TV-quality writing but, on the two occasions I was the judge, enough good work to find at least one exceptional play. What more can we ask for--intelligence, audacity and a true understanding of what playwriting is all about."
Grenadine follows a man's quest for love in the company of his three devoted friends. The bonds of friendship are challenged—and ultimately reaffirmed—by the quartet's journey through an unfamiliar landscape. Neil Wechsler graduated from Yale University in 1996 with distinction in Philosophy and Psychology. He has been writing novels, novellas, and plays ever since. He lives in Buffalo, New York, with his wife, Anne, and their two-year-old son, Max.
The judge for 2009 and 2010 will be
David Hare. The winner of many awards on both sides of the Atlantic,
David Hare is one of Britain's best-known playwrights. Ten of his plays have been presented in London and on Broadway where most recently he directed The Year of Magical Thinking by
Joan Didion starring
Vanessa Redgrave. Those plays include Plenty, Skylight, Amy's View, The Blue Room, The Judas Kiss, Via Dolorosa and The Vertical Hour which after its Broadway run, opened at the Royal Court Theatre earlier this year directed by Jeremy Herrin. The cast included Indira Varma, who played a former war correspondent and a Yale University Professor, Anton Lesser and Tom Riley.
David Hare said: "On both sides of the Atlantic we live in a theatrical climate where new writers are paid more and more attention and less and less respect. For all the so-called play development that goes on, it's harder than ever for a new playwright to be heard on their own terms and in their own voice. I can't think of anything more useful and generous than the Yale prize for an unpublished play, and that's the reason I wanted to be its first English judge."
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