National Arts Club President O. Aldon James announced that Bridget Carpenter won the annual $10,000 award given by the Club for her play The Faculty Room. Lynn Nottage was also named the recipient of the Kesselring's Honorable Mention for her play Intimate Apparel. The Honorable Mention carries a $2,500 award.
Theatres from across the country were invited to nominate playwrights "who show exceptional promise, but have not yet received prominent national attention." Thirteen theatres participated in this year's process, and winners were chosen by three judges: playwright John Guare; playwright and performer Eric Bogosian and Lincoln Center dramaturg Anne Cattaneo. Carpenter was nominated by the Actors Theatre of Louisville and Nottage by South Coast Repertory.
Other nominees included Trish Harnetiaux, Inside a Bigger Box; Jim Grimsley, Fascination; Jorge Cortinas, Blind Mouth Singing; Leslie Ayvazian, Lovely Day; Glen Berger, Great Men of Science, Nos. 21 & 22; Gordon Dahlquist, Messalina; Carson Kreitzer, The Long Songs of J. Robert Oppenheimer; Rosanna Staffa, Ada; Regina Taylor, Drowning Crow; Christopher Shinn, Where Do We Live; and Naomi Iizuka, 36 Views.
Playwright Bridget Carpenter was a 2002 Guggenheim Fellow is currently a Playwright-in-Residence at Alaska's Perseverance Theatre, where she recently premiered her new play, The Man in the Flying Chair. Her award-winning The Faculty Room is set in the faculty room of a school where three teachers "trade confidences, spill secrets and forge or break alliances."
Playwright Lynn Nottage has also written Por'Knockers; Poof!; Crumbs from the Table of Joy: and Mud, River, Stone. Her new play Fabulation will have its world premiere in June at Playwrights Horizons. The 2003 Kesselring awards will be presented to the playwrights on Nov. 23 at the National Arts Club, located in Manhattan at 15 Gramercy Park South. For information about the Club, which was established in 1948, call (212) 475-3424.
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The Kesselring Prize is named in honor of Joseph Kesselring, who penned Arsenic and Old Lace. Previous winners of the award include David Auburn, Tony Kushner, Nicky Silver, Anna Deavere Smith and David Lindsay Abaire.
