Barrington Stage Names Stacey Rose Inaugural Winner of Bonnie & Terry Burman New Play Award

Barrington Stage Company announced today that Stacey Rose is the inaugural winner of The Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award, a new national play contest at BSC. Rose will be awarded $25,000 and her play America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro will receive a world premiere production at BSC.

"There are few words for how honored I am to be the inaugural recipient of the Bonnie & Terry Burman New Play Award," said Stacey Rose. "Having the play produced, as well, meets and exceeds my wildest dreams for the world premiere of this play."

The play is described as follows:

Set in the not too distant future, America v. 2.1 is a day in the life of a troupe of Black actors who are charged with re-enacting the revised history of the once-thriving American Negro. It quickly becomes a day of reckoning as the troupe is forced to face the parallels their own lives draw to the lives of the very Negroes whose stories they are compelled to tell.

The Second-Place winners, Brent Askari and Christina Quintana, will each receive $5,000 and a developmental staged reading.

In American Underground by Brent Askari, an interracial couple enjoys a visit from their college-aged son when a young Muslim woman arrives at their back door looking for safe passage via a new Underground Railroad. This riveting thriller takes us inside a stark vision of an unapologetic America.

In Citizen Scientist by Christina Quintana, Kian, an actuary, and Neema, an astronomer, meet exploring the starfield for exoplanets and battling their recent losses. Together, they discover the planet Kepler-64b and learn what it means to be present here on Earth.

"I want to thank Bonnie and Terry Burman for recognizing the importance of discovering and supporting vital new voices in the American Theatre," said Artistic Director Julianne Boyd. "Barrington Stage is thrilled to bring to life this summer Stacey Rose's play, America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro, a provocative, uncompromising look at Black Americans in post-apocalyptic America, and both Brent Askari and Christina Quintana share Stacey's sense of urgency in telling stories that need to be heard now."

The winning plays were chosen out of 461 plays that were submitted, which were culled down to 70 semi-finalists, and then 7 finalists.In addition to the three winning plays, the other finalists for the Burman Award included Steal Her Bones by Thomas Gibbons;EIGHT NIGHTS by Jennifer Maisel; 2144 SOUTH ST. by Karina Billini; and (end of message) by Laura Jacqmin.

Final play selections were read by the Burman New Play Contest Panel comprised of Julianne Boyd, Artistic Director of Barrington Stage Company; Ken Cerniglia, Literary Manager & Dramaturg at Disney Theatrical Group; Natasha Sinha, Director of Artistic Programs at Signature Theatre; and Mark St. Germain, Playwright and BSC Associate Artist.

Stacey Rose hails from Elizabeth, NJ and Charlotte, NC respectively. She's an alum of the MFA program in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been presented at The Fire This Time Festival, The Brooklyn Generator, The Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Mosaic Theater, The Amoralists Theatre Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, National Black Theatre, Pillsbury House Theatre and The Lark's Playwrights' Week. Stacey was a 2015-16 Dramatist Guild Fellow, a 2017-18 Playwrights' Center Many Voices Fellow and a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow. She is a 2018-2021 Playwrights' Center Core Writer, a member of The Goodman Theatre's Playwrights Unit and The Civilians R&D Group. Stacey's work celebrates and explores Blackness, Black identity, Black history, bodypolitics and the dilemma of life as the "other."

ASKARI is a Persian-American writer and actor living in Portland, Maine. Brent's play Hard Cell was part of the 2017 PlayPenn development conference and is being produced as part of Geva Theatre Center's 2018-2019 Mainstage Season. Some of his other recent plays include: Digby's Home (Semi-finalist O'Neill Playwriting Conference, produced at Mad Horse Theatre); Cocktails and Travails (Winner of Neil Simon Festival's National New Play Contest and produced at The Theater Project); Bending Reeds (Semi-Finalist Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Blank Stage Living Room Series). Brent was part of HBO's New Writers Project and has written screenplays for Paramount Pictures, Marvel Films, MTV and Reveille Entertainment. Brent has acted in numerous theatrical productions across the country and is an ensemble member of Mad Horse Theatre Company. Brent also narrated the nationally syndicated children's television program "Animal Science," which was nominated for a national Daytime Emmy in 2014.

CHRISTINA QUINTANA (CQ) is a writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots. Her plays include: Azul (2017 Kilroys List; forthcoming World Premiere: Southern Rep, April 2019), Scissoring (INTAR; Finalist Alliance/Kendeda; now available from Dramatists Play Service), Evensong (APAC; Kilroys List Honorable Mention), Enter Your Sleep (Yale Cabaret) and The Great Lonely Roamer & The Night That Changed Everything (NYU Voices Festival). She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Playwrights Realm, Van Lier New Voices at the Lark, Queer/Art, CubaOne and Lambda Literary. Her chapbook of poetry, The Heart Wants, was released from Finishing Line Press in 2016, and her poem "She-lium" was featured on Radiolab in collaboration with Emotive Fruition. An alumnus of Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theatre and a current WP Lab Member, she holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University School of the Arts. For more, visit cquintana.com

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos