Samuel D. Hunter, Sanaz Toossi and More Receive 2023 Dramatists Guild Awards

The Dramatists Guild of America has announced the first recipients of their 2023 Awards.

The Awards will be presented at Joe's Pub on Monday, May 15. The ceremony is open to the public with limited tickets available. Join the DG Awards mailing list for future updates HERE.

The Hull-Warriner Award is the only award given by dramatists to dramatists. It is presented annually by the Dramatists Guild Council to an author or team of authors in recognition of their play dealing with controversial subjects involving the fields of political, religious, or social mores of the times. This year's Hull-Warriner Award will go to two recipients: Samuel D. Hunter for A Case for the Existence of God and Sanaz Toossi for English.

The finalists for this year's Hull-Warriner Award are Joshua Harmon for Prayer for the French Republic, James Ijames for Fat Ham, Mona Mansour for The Vagrant Trilogy, and Bruce Norris for Downstate.

The Flora Roberts Award, administered by the Dramatists Guild Foundation, is presented to a dramatist in recognition of distinguished work in the theatre and to encourage the continuation of that work. The recipient of this year's award is Caridad Svich.

The Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award is presented by the Dramatists Guild Council in recognition of distinguished lifetime achievement in theatrical writing. Previous recipients include Edward Albee, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Horton Foote, Micki Grant, John Guare, A.R. Gurney, Sheldon Harnick & Jerry Bock, Tina Howe, John Kander & Fred Ebb, Adrienne Kennedy, Terrence McNally, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, Stephen Sondheim, Joseph Stein, Paula Vogel, August Wilson, and Lanford Wilson. Career Achievement Awards have also been presented to Marsha Norman and Stephen Schwartz.

The Dramatists Guild will give two Lifetime Achievement Awards this year, to Jules Feiffer and to the writing team of Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford.

Recipients for the Dramatists Guild's other awards, including The Horton Foote Award, The Frederick Loewe Award, the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund Defender Award, and The Lanford Wilson Award will be announced at awards night.

Since its inception in 1919, the Dramatists Guild of America has been the professional association for playwrights, librettists, lyricists, and composers writing for the American stage. With over 10,000 members around the world, the Guild is guided by a governing council of writers who each give their time, interest and support to advance the rights of dramatists everywhere, including the right for dramatists to own and control their own copyrighted work. The Guild's advocacy, programs, events, publications, and other services provide dramatists with the resources, the community, and the support they require to protect their property, their livelihoods, and their unique voices in the American theatre.

BIOS

Gretchen Cryer

is most well-known for writing the book and lyrics and starring in I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road (with music by Nancy Ford) which won the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Musical and a Grammy nomination for the album. Gretchen has written numerous other shows with Nancy Ford: Now Is the Time for All Good Men (off-Broadway), The Last Sweet Days of Isaac (Obie Award - Best Musical, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award), Shelter (Broadway - Golden Theater), Hang On to the Good Times (Manhattan Theater Club), The Fabulous Party (Williamstown Theater Festival), The American Girls Revue (American Girl Place - Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles), Circle of Friends (American Girl Place - Chicago and New York), and Anne of Green Gables (Theatreworks, Lortel Theater). She serves on the Dramatists Guild Council (since 1974), is a longtime supporter of the DGF Fellows, and is President Emeritus of the Dramatists Guild Foundation.

Nancy Ford

is the composer of Now is the Time For All Good Men, The Last Sweet Days of Isaac, Shelter, I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road, Hang On to the Good Times, The American Girls Revue, Circle of Friends, Anne of Green Gables, Still Getting My Act Together, and Eleanor (all in collaboration with Gretchen Cryer); The Game of Love, in collaboration with Tom Jones and Jacques Offenbach; and Blue Roses, a musical adaptation of The Glass Menagerie, in collaboration with Mimi Turque. She was a scriptwriter for various daytime television dramas for 23 years, a producer for the DGF's Legacy Project, and is a past member of the councils of the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild of America East, and the board of the League of Professional Theatre Women.

Jules Feiffer

is a Pulitzer-Prize and Oscar-winning cartoonist, playwright, and screenwriter. He has been considered the most widely read satirist in the country. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 as America's leading editorial cartoonist, and in 2004 he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame. He wrote the animated short Munro, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1961. The Library of Congress has recognized his "remarkable legacy," from 1946 to the present, as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, adult and children's book author, illustrator, and art instructor. After teaching at the Yale School of Drama and Northwestern University and serving as a Senior Fellow at Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program, Feiffer took a post at Southampton College (the graduate school of Long Island University). Among his many honors are membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1995), the National Cartoonist Society Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award (2004), and being named the Creativity Foundation's 2006 Laureate. Jules has been a member of the Dramatists Guild Council since 1970.

Samuel D. Hunter

grew up in Moscow, Idaho, and lives in New York City. He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship for his work as a playwright. His full-length plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), A Case for the Existence of God (New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play), A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), Greater Clements (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play, Outer Critics Circle Honoree), Lewiston/Clarkston (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, The Healing, and The Harvest, among others. A film version of The Whale, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser, was released by A24 films. He is the recipient of a 2012 Whiting Writers Award and an honorary doctorate from the University of Idaho. His work has been produced off-Broadway in New York City by Lincoln Center Theater, Playwrights Horizons, LCT3, Signature Theatre, Page 73 Productions, Clubbed Thumb, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Elsewhere, his work has been produced by Theatre Royal Bath, Dallas Theater Center, Seattle Rep, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, South Coast Rep, and Victory Gardens, among others. Two published anthologies of his work are available from TCG Books, and a third is forthcoming. He is a member of New Dramatists and a current Resident Playwright at the Signature Theatre in New York City. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.

Caridad Svich

is a playwright, translator, educator, lyricist, and theatre-maker, and was recently named Artistic Director of New Play Development at the Lortel Theatre in NYC. She has received a 2018 Tanne Foundation Award, 2012 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement in the theatre, a 2018 NNPN rolling world premiere for Red Bike, a 2012 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award for Guapa, and the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize. She has won the National Latino Playwriting Award (sponsored by Arizona Theatre Company) twice and has been short-listed for the PEN Award in Drama four times. Her works in English and Spanish have been seen at venues across the US and abroad, and her works are published by TCG, Smith & Kraus, Playscripts, Broadway Play Publishing, and more. Four collections of her works for live performance are published as follows: The Hour of All Things and other Plays (Intellect UK, 2017); JARMAN (all this maddening beauty) and other plays (Intellect UK, 2016); Instructions for Breathing and other plays (Seagull Books UK, 2014); and Blasted Heavens (Eyecorner Press, Denmark, 2012). She has also published Toward a Future Theatre (Methuen Drama, 2022) and her play Red Bike (TRW Plays). Caridad is currently teaching at Rutgers University-NB, NYU's School of Professional Studies, and the Einhorn School of Performing Arts at Primary Stages. She has also taught playwriting at Bard, Barnard, Bennington, Denison, Ohio State, ScriptWorks, UCSD, Yale School of Drama, and with the Dramatists Guild Institute. caridadsvich.co

Sanaz Toossi

is an Iranian-American playwright from Orange County, California. Her plays include the critically acclaimed, award-winning English (co-production Atlantic Theater Company/Roundabout Theatre Company) and Wish You Were Here (Playwrights Horizons; Williamstown/Audible, released 2020). She is currently under commission at Atlantic Theater Company (Launch commission; Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation grant), Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (American Revolutions Cycle). Sanaz was the 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow, a recipient of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award, the 2022 recipient of The Horton Foote Award and, most recently, the 2023 recipient of the Best New American Play Obie Award. MFA: NYU Tisch