Minor Bird Receives 2025 Charles M. Getchell New Play Award from Southeastern Theatre Conference 

The Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC) has awarded the 2025 Charles M. Getchell New  Play Award to Douglas Chang for his play Minor Bird. 

The Award will be presented at SETC's 76th Annual Convention in Baltimore, March 19-22.  SETC will present a staged reading of the play on Thursday, March 20 at 7 PM EST, directed by  Paul Gabbard. 

Set in a suburb of Alabama, the play tells the story of Charlotte, the author of a celebrated novel  set in the Deep South, fictionally recalling her father's heroic efforts to harbor a black man  unjustly accused of a crime. Now in her 80s, she shoots and kills a black teen who has  trespassed on her property. When Letitia, an African-American lawyer from New York, comes  down to assist in the case, and the boy's uncle Davóne, who is barely older than the victim  himself, seeks to confront the old recluse and get “satisfaction,” Charlotte's life story unravels,  leading to explosive encounters with Davóne, her relatives, and ghosts of her past. 

While clearly fictional, the play is inspired by the life and legacy of Harper Lee, the Pulitzer  Prize-winning author of To Kill a Mockingbird. “When her second book, Go Set a Watchman,  came out in 2015,” explains Chang, “I initially avoided it, swayed by the lukewarm reviews and  controversies surrounding its publication. Then I read the reviews more closely, and I noticed  most of them weren't reviewing the book so much as criticizing the way Atticus Finch (the  iconic character from Mockingbird) was portrayed. They seemed almost personally offended at  how Lee had treated him. It was then that I realized there was more to this story.” 

David Beach, Chair of the Getchell New Play Award, says, “Minor Bird interrogates whether a  literary reputation can—or should—survive the actions of its creator. It also raises questions  about the way society venerates authors while erasing the deeper racial and ethical conflicts that  underpin their work. The play forces audiences to confront the tension between idealism and  historical reality.” 

The Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC) is the largest and broadest network of theatre  practitioners in the nation. The Charles M. Getchell New Play Award, named for SETC's former  president, is dedicated to the discovery, development and publicizing of worthy new plays and  playwrights. 

Douglas Chang is the author of four other plays, most recently The Dust Comedy. As the  producer of “Live From Lincoln Center” on PBS, he received a primetime Emmy Award for  Sweeney Todd in Concert with the New York Philharmonic, starring Emma Thompson, and an  Emmy nomination for the Philharmonic's production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel. He  also produced the televised versions of The Nance starring Nathan Lane; Act One and Falsettos,  both directed for the stage by James Lapine; and Dominique Morisseau's Pipeline.