Rajiv Joseph Honored with DGA's 2017 Horton Foote Playwriting Award

The Dramatists Guild of America has announced they will present the 2017 Horton Foote Playwriting Award to playwright Rajiv Joseph at the Dramatists Guild's annual awards presentations Monday, February 27, 2017, at the French Institute/Alliance Francaise. This year's award finalists were ClareBarron and Cori Thomas. The Richenthal Foundation is again sponsoring the award.

This playwriting award, in its second year, will bestow $25,000 on a dramatist whose work seeks to plumb the ineffable nature of being human. The award is named after the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Oscar-winning, and Tony-nominated playwright Horton Foote, who passed away in 2009. Due to Foote's longtime association with the Dramatists Guild, the award is administered by the Dramatists Guild Fund and presented annually at the Guild's awards presentation. The first recipient of the award was Stephen Karam.

Rajiv Joseph's play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama and also awarded a grant for Outstanding New American Play by the National Endowment for the Arts. His play Guards at the Taj was a 2016 Obie Winner for Best New American Play and 2016 Lucille Lortel Winner for Best Play. His play Archduke will receive its world premiere this April at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. He has been awarded artistic grants from the Whiting Foundation, United States Artists and the Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust. He served for three years in the Peace Corps in Senegal and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The Horton Foote Playwriting Award will be presented Monday, February 27, 2017. The Guild's other awards, including the Hull-Warriner Award, the Frederick Loewe Award, and the Flora Roberts Award, will be announced at a later date. The Guild has already announced Martyna Majok and Christopher Chen as the co-recipients of the Lanford Wilson Award, and Jeffrey Seller, Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton as the recipients of the DLDF Defender Award.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride