Jason Wells Wins M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award, 3/27

Jason Wells will be honored with the 2010 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award, for his play Perfect Mendacity. Given by the American Theatre Critics Association, the award will be presented on March 27 at  a ceremony at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, KY.

Wells' play, Perfect Mendacity, focuses on a top secret, internal memo from a scientific research facility that is leaked to the media. Dr. Walter Kreutzer is forced to take a lie detector test about its origins. With his career on the line, Walter gets tangled up in investigations of bioterrorism and racially motivated killings. As suspicions escalate that Walter's wife is involved, the play's riveting plot twists uncover the insidious hypocrisy of government sanctioned discrimination. 

The M. Elizabeth Osborn Award was established in 1993, named for Theatre Communications Group and American Theatre play editor M. Elizabeth Osborn. The award now carries a $1,000 cash award, and receives recognition in the Best Plays theater yearbook. The award is designed to recognize the work of an author whose plays have not yet received a major production, such as off-Broadway or Broadway, nor received other major national awards.

The Osborn Award is typically presented during the Actors Theater of Louisville's Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Past recipients include: Yussel El Guindi, (Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat), Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder (Gee's Bend), Ken LaZebnik (Mixed Blood Theatre Company), and J.T. Rogers (Madagascar).

The American Theatre Critics Association, Inc. is the only national association of professional theatre critics. Our members work for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and on-line services across the United States.

For more than 35 years, ATCA has provided opportunities for members to explore the remarkable artistic resources of our National Theatre and of theatre around the globe. We work to foster greater communication among theatre critics in the United States and abroad, to improve the training and development of critics at different stages of their careers, to advocate absolute freedom of expression in theatre and theatre criticism - including the individual critic's right to disagree with the opinions of colleagues - and to increase public awareness of the theatre as an important national resource.