Paul Kruse to Receive National Theatre Conference Stavis Playwright Award

Paul Kruse will be honored with The National Theatre Conference's (NTC) prestigious Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, supported by Jean Bruce Scott and Risa Brainin, presented annually to recognize an outstanding emerging playwright. Kruse and his striking play Eelpout were selected by NTC's Stavis Committee. Kruse will be honored with the award and an honorarium of $2,000 during NTC's annual meeting in New York, January 2027. A reading of Kruse's play Eelpout, directed by Raz Golden, will be presented to the gathering and invited guests. Two other plays rose to the top as finalists: Ajax by Habib Yazdi and Overnight at the Museum by Nia Akilah Robinson.

Eelpout is a fast-paced, surreal farce about the traps of Midwestern masculinity, where friends are lovers, fish can talk, and life's mysteries beckon from the bottom of a frozen lake. Sven Svensen and Ole Olsen have been best buds since kindergarten, but all that changes on the morning of Ole's ice-fishing bachelor party. Could they be something more than friends, or is Sven destined for something even more wild and strange? This fantasia on Midwestern masculinity invites us to consider the limits of Queerness. Naturally, this includes a dream ballet Eelpout Orgy!

Paul Kruse

Paul Kruse writes absurd comedy that packs an emotional punch. He was a 2023-2025 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis and a cohort member of Audible's third Emerging Playwrights Fund. He completed his MFA at UT Austin in 2020, where he was a fellow with the Michener Center for Writers. Paul has developed work at Rogue Machine in Los Angeles, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Yaddo, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, Montana Repertory Theatre, and Middlebury College. His plays have been produced by Shattered Globe Theatre in Chicago, Adjusted Realists in Brooklyn, Quantum Theatre in Pittsburgh, Vortex Theater in Austin, and in high schools around the country. His audio play Once Removed was an official selection at the 2022 Tribeca Festival. From 2012-2022, Paul was resident playwright with Pittsburgh's Hatch Arts Collective, which he co-founded with Adil Mansoor and Nicole Shero. https://www.paulwkruse.com/