The winner will be announced March 31 at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. The prize includes the highest American playwriting cash award of $25,000. Two additional citation recipients will be given cash prizes of $7,500 each. All prizes are funded by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.
The American Theatre Critics Association presents the annual Steinberg honor for "outstanding new plays produced around the United States, outside of New York City" placing a focus on regional works not often included in the numerous New York based awards.
"The amazing range of work – dramas, fantasies, musicals, farces, melodramas – was uplifting confirmation that theatre remains a vital and evolving art form that can speak to every generation,” chairman Bill Hirschman said about the plays.
The six finalists (and the regional theatres at which they were first produced) are:
Last year's winner of the Steinberg New Play Award was Lee Blessing's A Body of Water with the other citations going to Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter and the late August Wilson for Radio Golf. Previous recipients of the honor include Craig Lucas' The Singing Forest (2005), Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel (2004), Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics (2003), Horton Foote's The Carpetbaggers Children (2002), Jane Martin's Anton in Show Business (2001), Regina Taylor's Oo-Bla-Dee (2000) and Lanford Wilson's Book of Days (1999).
For more information on the American Theatre Critics Association, visit www.americantheatrecritics.org.
