Photos: Talene Monahan Wins Horton Foote Prize for MEET THE CARTOZIANS

Monday night at a private club on the Upper East Side, the Horton Foote Prize held a ceremony honoring Talene Monahan for her play Meet the Cartozians. Tony Award-winning director David Cromer presented Monahan the $50,000 prize and a limited edition of Keith Carter's iconic photograph of Horton Foote. Also presented at this year's ceremony, the Horton Foote Prize Gratitude Gift, was awarded to Waterwell, and accepted by Founder Arian Moayed and Artistic Director Lee Sunday Evans. See photos!

Additional speakers at this year's ceremony included The Horton Foote Prize Founder & Prize Board Chair Mari Marchbanks, Executive Director Valerie Brea Ross, and the Prize's Honorary Chair, Tony Award-winning actress Celia Keenan-Bolger.

Meet the Cartozians was nominated by Second Stage Theater. The play, directed by David Cromer and starring Andrea Martin and Will Brill, premiered Off-Broadway in November 2025 at Second Stage's Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center Theater. Meet the Cartozians was later named a 2026 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama.

Part riveting historical drama, part scorching satire, Talene Monahon's Meet the Cartozians reopens a startling chapter of American history. In the 1920s, an Armenian American man fights for legal recognition. A century later, a new generation embraces pop culture's appetite for influence and fame. Layered, surprising, and wildly imaginative, Meet the Cartozians asks how we decide who gets to belong - and at what price.

This year's Artistic Judges Panel included Celia Keenan-Bolger, Tony Award-winning actor and the Prize's Honorary Chair; Ian Belknap, Artistic Director of New York Stage and Film; Taylor Reynolds, Obie Award-winning director; Lizzie Stern, Creative Executive at Seaview and former Literary Director of Playwrights Horizons; and Jiyoun Chang, Tony-nominated lighting and set designer.

Also presented at this year's ceremony was the Horton Foote Prize Gratitude Gift, awarded each prize year to a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that endeavors to have a positive impact through the work and art of theater, as chosen by the Honorary Chair. This year's $10,000 gift was awarded to Waterwell at the direction of Ms. Keenan-Bolger, who received the 2025 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award for her advocacy work through the arts.

Founded in 2002 by two-time Tony nominee Arian Moayed and Drama Desk-nominated director Tom Ridgely, Waterwell is an Obie Award-winning nonprofit company in New York, now led by Artistic Director Lee Sunday Evans. Creating theatre, film, and digital media that wrestle with complex civic questions, Waterwell gathers people for work that provokes, inspires, and builds community.