Wagner College Theatre Reveals The 2023 Stanley Drama Award-Winner, THE MAGICIAN'S SISTER

Wagner College Theatre has announced that the winner of the 2023 Stanley Drama Award is Jami Brandli for her play The Magician's Sister. In addition to the winner, three finalists were named, The Great White Way: The Bert Williams Musical, by Aaron Alon; Tennessee Wet Rub, by Kim E. Ruyle; and Martha & Me, by Lynn Hoffman. The award will be presented in the Manzulli Boardroom in Foundation Hall on the Wagner College campus on Thursday, October 26th 2023, at 7pm. On Friday, October 27th at 7pm, again in the Manzulli Boardroom, there will be a fully staged reading of The Magician's Sister, featuring Wagner College Theatre community members and directed by Prof. Michael "Mickey" Tennenbaum. Both events are open to the public and were coordinated by Joey Donnelly, Stanley Drama Award Administrative Director.

About the Stanley Drama Award

The Stanley Drama Award was established in 1957 by Staten Island philanthropist Alma Guyon Timolat Stanley and endowed through the Stanley-Timolat Foundation to encourage and support aspiring playwrights. The national Stanley Award competition is administered by the Wagner College Theatre program. The Stanley Award carries with it a monetary prize along with the distinction of joining the company of past Stanley winners, including Terrence McNally's This Side of the Door (aka Things That Go Bump in the Night), Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro, Lonne Elder III's Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, and Jonathan Larson's Rent.

The Winner

The Magician's Sister follows the story of two sisters: the aspiring Magician driven by being the best, and the play's narrator, who somewhat reluctantly serves as her "Wise Assistant." When the Magician purposely disappears herself and leaves behind mysterious clues to solve, the Wise Assistant becomes obsessed with finding her. As the sisters' story dramatically unfolds over the span of thirty years-interweaving the present and the past-we witness the sisters struggle to fulfill their collective goals and conflicting individual desires, while they strive to perfectly execute Houdini's famous "Metamorphosis" illusion. The Magician's Sister explores the complexities of sisterhood, the ripple effect of family trauma, and the complicated pursuit and price of "being special," while also incorporating the stories of real, historical female magicians and plenty of on-stage magic.

Jami Brandli's plays include The Magician's Sister, The Romeo and Juliet Senior Citizens Project: A Comedy, Technicolor Life, M-Theory, Through the Eye of a Needle, O: A Rhapsody in Divorce, Visiting Hours, The Caregiver's Guide and BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) which was named in the inaugural Kilroys List. Works produced/developed at New Dramatists, New York Theatre Workshop, The Lark, Kitchen Dog Theater, Launch Pad, The Women's Voices Theater Festival, Moving Arts, The Road, Inkwell Theater, Great Plains Theatre Conference, among other venues. Jami was a participating playwright at Center Theatre Group's 2022 L.A. Writers' Workshop led by Luis Alfaro where she developed her play about female magicians. The Magician's Sister was presented last September as part of CTG's New Works Festival at The Kirk Douglas Theater. The Magician's Sister recently won the 2023 Jane Chambers Award, and it was workshopped and publicly presented at the 2023 Kayenta New Play Lab in Ivins, UT. It was also a finalist for the 2023 Risk Award.

Additional accolades: BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) nominated for Best Playwriting for an Original Play; Los Angeles Ovation Awards. 2020 Under Construction Playwright with The Road. 2019 Humanitas Prize PLAY LA playwright. Winner of John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award, Holland New Voices Award, Ashland New Plays Festival and Aurora Theatre Company's GAP Prize. Her short works are published with TCG, Dramatic Publishing Company, Applause Books, and Smith & Kraus.

A proud member of The Playwrights Union and The Dramatists Guild, Jami teaches dramatic writing at Lesley University's low-residency MFA program. She is represented by the Michael Moore Agency and Navigation Media. Her plays can also be found on the New Play Exchange. www.jamibrandli.com

The Finalists

The Great White Way: the Bert Williams Musical is a new musical about famed comedian Bert Williams, who was the first major Black star on Broadway. His life in comedy, set against a time of anti-Black race riots throughout the United States, tells the story of the man WC Fields called "the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew." Please visit bertwilliamsmusical.com to learn more, read a full synopsis, and hear all of the songs from the recently released Concept Cast Album.

Aaron Alon is an award-winning writer, composer, and director-producer. His recent stage musicals include The Great White Way: the Bert Williams Musical, Mad!, and The Chosen One. His feature film musical Bully was screened in film festivals around the world, winning over 20 festival awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Aaron was a 2022 finalist for the Fred Ebb Award. His classical music has also been performed around the world, released on five CDs, and awarded numerous national and international composition honors. He is a member of ASCAP and is a founding member and president of the Board of Directors of Thunderclap Productions, a nonprofit production company based in Houston.

Martha and Me was created with a Playwriting Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission of the Arts in 2020. The arrival of an invitation to the 90th Anniversary Celebration of the Martha Graham Company releases a flood of memories for principal dancer Kendyl Strope, including the question that's haunted her for over 30 years, Was I good enough? As she searches for an answer, Marth and Me counterpoints Kendyl Strope and Martha Graham, two artists from two different socio-economic backgrounds, races, moments in their careers, and roles in the Graham Company. It presents them as both young dancers realizing their dream to dance and old women reflecting on their lives and careers, as Kendyl considers what it cost her to work for an artistic genius and dance with greatness.

Lynn Hoffman received an MFA in writing from Spalding University where she studied Dramatic Writing. In 2021, the Caravan Theatre Company gave Martha and Me its first reading under the direction of Elizabeth Bove. In 2020, Three Mothers (full-length) was selected for the Depot for New Play Season of Readings. The same play advanced to the 2nd Round in the 2019 Orlando Shakes Festival. Moral Allies (full-length) advanced to the final round at The Depot for New Play Readings. The Sidewalk Living Room (full-length for young adults) was a Semi-Finalist for the 2017 Biennial Write Now Playwriting Competition for Young Audiences; it also was a Semi-Finalist in the American Alliance for the Theater and Education's Unpublished Playwriting Reading Competition. For more information about Lynn's plays, please visit her link at the New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/user.

Tennessee Wet Rub: In Tennessee, 1951, Hank and Bertha are huddled in their barbecue restaurant during a winter storm when 16-year-old Arleta, a white girl, and Dunk, a 20-year-old black male, enter seeking shelter. This eloping couple is breaking the law, and they put the values and compassion of Hank and Bertha to the test. Conflict escalates and everything comes to a head when a deputy sheriff arrives to arrest Dunk for kidnapping Arleta.

Kim Ruyle is a playwright based in Wisconsin and a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and The Playwright's Center. His stories come from a unique perspective. A US Army veteran with blue-collar roots, Kim went on to earn three master's degrees and a PhD. Writing for the stage is a second career for Kim beginning in 2018. His eight full-length plays have been produced and won awards. https://kimruyle.com/ kim.ruyle@inventivetalent.com

About Wagner College Theatre

Wagner College's Performing Arts Department provides students with a strong liberal arts background combined with intensive training in dance, music, acting, design, and more. With more than 50 years producing live performances on Staten Island, Wagner College has become a leader in the field and has ranked among the top 5 collegiate theatre programs in the United States by the Princeton Review since 2004, most recently ranking 3rd nationally in their 2023 "Best 388 Colleges" guide. Through a rigorous combination of theory and practice, the department seeks to foster leadership, a sense of community, artistic integrity, intellectual expertise, and the best professional values to serve students in their chosen profession.

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