Playwrights Frank Chin and Migdalia Cruz Honored With 2023 Legacy Playwright Awards

Esteemed American Playwrights Frank Chin and Migdalia Cruz have been announced as the 2023 recipients of the Legacy Playwright Awards. 

The industry-wide Legacy Playwrights Initiative (LPI) shines a spotlight on the achievements and influence of playwrights whose work deserves greater visibility, including those who have fallen out of the public eye. LPI offers a pathway to rediscovery for honorees and their writing and provides financial support.

The Initiative has five components: two monetary Legacy Playwright Awards; advocacy and financial incentives for professional theater production of their work; the reissuing of previously published plays; programs to raise awareness within the theater field and in universities; and filmed interviews highlighting the Legacy Playwrights' careers.

"I am honored by the generosity of the Dramatists Guild Foundation and so proud to be named a Legacy Playwright along with the esteemed Frank Chin. To me, legacy is not what you leave behind but what you pay forward. I hope to continue to be of service and value to my playwriting community,” Cruz said upon receiving the news of her award. “I wish my mentor Irene Fornes could have been there to cheer me on and poke me in the sides with the reminder: ‘It's not over yet!' There is nothing more fulfilling than the knowledge that you have been of value, that your words will continue to be present—even when you are not—to inspire your students, mentees, future dramatists to take risks, be brave, look forward with hope to the complicated and beautifully imperfect act of creation."

Conceived and developed over several years by Anne Cattaneo, formerly of Lincoln Center; Dramatists Guild Foundation Executive Director Rachel Routh; Benita Hofstetter Koman; Todd London; and national colleagues, LPI is supported by a leadership grant from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation (Program Director Ben Pesner), the Dramatists Guild Foundation, and generous gifts from individuals. Previous winners are Carlyle Brown, the late Ed Bullins, Constance Congdon, Philip Kan Gotanda, and Milcha Sanchez-Scott.

A pioneer of Asian American literature and theater, Frank Chin is an award-winning playwright, novelist, and cultural critic. The first Asian American playwright to be produced at a major New York theater (The American Place Theatre), his plays THE CHICKENCOOP CHINAMAN (1972) and THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON (1974) remain seminal works in the history of U.S. theater. Chin's books include the novels, Donald Duk and Gunga Din Highway, and an essay collection, Bulletproof Buddhists. His early, “lost” novel, The Confessions of a Number One Son, was published in 2015. He is also the co-editor of two landmark anthologies of Asian American literature: Aiiieeeee! and its sequel, The Big Aiiieeeee! He lives in Los Angeles.

Migdalia Cruz is a Bronx-born, award-winning playwright, lyricist, translator, and librettist of more than 60 works for stage, radio, film, TV, and podcast, performed in 150 venues in 40 cities in 12 countries. An alumna of New Dramatists, her awards include: NEA, McKnight, NYSCA, TCG/Pew, and she was named the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright. María Irene Fornés nurtured her at INTAR and Latino Chicago gave her a home as playwright-in residence. She is a master teacher of playwriting with the Fornés Institute, various universities, and professional theater schools. She was co-chair of the Dramatists Guild Foundation Playwriting Fellows 2020-21; mentors the NYC Latinx Playwrights Circle; and commissioned by Clubbed Thumb, INTAR, and Kitchen Dog (Dallas). 2021-23 productions:  Macbeth translation @Shakespeare In Detroit, August 2023; Macbeth translation & Fishtank, in a workshop-collaboration with Blueprint/PlayOnShakespeare/Magic Theatre (San Francisco) in April, 2023; Dinner With Dee @Kitchen Dog (Dallas), June 2022; a PlayOnShakespeare translation of Macbeth (Sunderland, England) @TheatreSpaceNorthEast, Aug 2021, and in 2022@USD/Old Globe (San Diego), and is now a podcast @Next Chapter Podcasts; Richard III produced by @TheatreSpaceNorthEast (Sunderland); YORICK'S LAST LAUGH @Shakespeare Dallas, 2021.  Her translations of Macbeth & Richard III were published by ACMRS Press. Migdalia was featured in “SHAKESPEARE AND LATINIDAD,” Edinburgh University Press, 2021, also in “Fifty Key Figures in LatinX and Latin American Theatre,” published by Routledge, February 2022, and in “Diasporic Journeys: Interviews with Puerto Rican Writers in the United States,” ed.by Carmen Haydée Rivera, Centro Press, 2023. She was recently honored by thekilroys.org/web-2023.

This year's winners were recently recognized at the Dramatists Guild Foundation's Gala on Monday, October 23, at the historic Ziegfeld Ballroom. 

The Legacy Playwrights Initiative is supported by the Dramatists Guild Foundation and Venturous Theater Fund. To donate to the Legacy Playwrights Initiative and learn more about the Legacy Playwright Awards, visit www.legacyplaywrightsinitiative.org. 

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