Melissa Rose and Brandice Peltier Win Top Honors at DUAF 2020

(New York) - Downtown Urban Arts Festival/DUAF has announced the top winners from its 18th season including Oregon-based Melissa Rose won Best Play for her play Baggage and Brandice Peltier (from New Jersey) won Best Short Play for Grocery Run. In the film category, Skin, directed by Guy Nattiv, won Best Short Film.

The complete list of honored works:

Theater Category

Best Play

Baggage by Melissa Rose
Second Place - The Red Plaid Suitcase by Alan "Rock" Wilk
Third Place - Restoration Parts by Sheila Duane

Best Short

Grocery Run by Brandice Peltier
Second Place - Soul Survivor by Alan P. Baez AKA Prophet/Not4Prophet
Third Place - One Act of Kindness by Juan Ramriez, Jr.

Film Category

BEST SHORT - Skin by Guy Nattiv
BEST U. S. SHORT - Marisol by Zoe Salicrup Junco
BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT - Subway by Carlos Garcia de Dios
VANGUARD AWARD - Zoe in Review by Stacey Larkins

Melissa Rose is an internationally recognized spoken word artist from the San Francisco Bay Area who currently resides in Eugene, Oregon. Her writing has been featured on Voicemail Poems, Indiefeed Poetry Podcast and in the international poetry anthology, Planet Slam. As a performer, Melissa has participated in dozens of regional and national spoken word competitions in the United States and performed in over 30 cities in Germany and Austria. Her one-woman play, Baggage, tells the story of her experiences as a touring spoken word artist in the United States and Europe while exploring her need to escape through travel and self-destruction.

Brandice Peltier is an actor/director/playwright living in Jersey City while working and chasing dreams in NYC. Her main purpose for making art (other than feeding her passion) is to give a stronger and more in depth voice to people just like herself, women of color. Her play, Grocery Run, takes place on a nice quiet day when a young, rookie white cop stops a young black female. What was supposed to be a simple grocery run becomes an intimate conversation that questions the power structure of race in America.

Guy Nattiv is an acclaimed filmmaker from Israel. His first American feature film, entitled Skin, stars Jamie Bell and Vera Farmiga and premiered at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival where it won the Fipresci Critic's Prize. The feature is derived from Nattiv's acclaimed short film, also entitled Skin, which won the Academy Award for Live Action Short in 2018. Skin commences at a small supermarket in a blue-collar town where a black man smiles at a 10 year old white boy across the checkout aisle. This innocuous moment sends two gangs into a ruthless war that ends with a shocking backlash.

The public performances and screenings for the 18th Annual season scheduled for spring 2020 at the Signature Theatre and Tribeca Film Center were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The winners were selected based on the evaluation of the play scripts and private film screening by Reg E. Gaines, Theater Artistic Director (Tony/Grammy nominee for Bring in da Noise Bring in da Funk) and Film Committee headed by Desmond Hall (acclaimed filmmaker and award-winning creative director.)

DUAF is an annual multi-disciplinary arts event with cultural offerings in theater, film, music and poetry from storytellers from America's burgeoning multicultural landscape and from around the world who share their stories that interpret our history and our times. For more info visit duafnyc.com