SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS Receives the 2018 Laurents/Hatcher Award

The Trustees of The Laurents / Hatcher Foundation, Inc. are pleased to announce that SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS by Donja R. Love is the recipient of the Laurents / Hatcher Foundation Award. Mr. Love will receive $50,000, and Manhattan Theatre Club, who will present the world premiere in June 2018, will receive $100,000 towards the production.

"I am thrilled that Donja's beautiful play has been recognized with this esteemed award," said Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, Manhattan Theatre Club. "Donja R. Love is a gifted writer and I am proud to be introducing him to MTC audiences later this season with this important play which humanizes a part of history rarely seen on stage. All of us at MTC are grateful to David Saint and everyone at the Laurents / Hatcher Foundation for their generous production support."

"On a plantation during the Civil War, a mystical tree stretches toward heaven. It protects James, a young slave, while he reads newspapers about the imminent possibility of freedom, as the battle rages on. When a brooding stranger arrives, James and his makeshift family take the man in. Soon, an unexpected bond leads to a striking romance, and everyone is in uncharted territory. But is love powerful enough to set your true self free? This lyrical and lushly realized play is part of poet, filmmaker and playwright Donja R. Love's exploration of queer love at pivotal moments in Black history. Directing is Saheem Ali (Nollywood Dreams)."

Sugar in Our Wounds will begin previews June 5, 2018 ahead of a June 19, 2018 opening night at Manhattan Theatre Club's Studio at Stage II - Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Series at New York City Center - Stage II (131 West 55th Street). Visit www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com to learn more.

In addition to the annual prize the Foundation also awarded Citations of Excellence to Rogelio Martinez for his play Blind Date and Sylvia Khoury for her play Selling Kabul. Martinez and Khoury will each receive $15,000.

Established in 2010, The LAURENTS / HATCHER FOUNDATION AWARD is an annual prize to be given for an un-produced, full-length play by an early-career American playwright. In addition to being one of the country's largest grants for new work, The Laurents / Hatcher Foundation Award is the first major award for playwriting to be named in honor of a gay couple: Tony Award winning playwright and director Arthur Laurents and his partner of 52 years, Tom Hatcher.

Arthur Laurents' career as a writer for the stage and screen spanned over 65 years, beginning with his play The Home of the Brave, which premiered on Broadway in 1945. Known for having written the books for musicals such as Gypsy and West Side Story as well as the screenplays for The Way We Were, The Turning Point and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, Mr. Laurents premiered many of his most recent plays at New Jersey's George Street Playhouse. His final memoir, The Rest of the Story, was posthumously published in the fall of 2012.

Tom Hatcher, who died in October 2006, began his career as an actor but moved into real estate as a contractor and then as a developer. He created the private park adjoining the house in Quogue, Long Island that was home for the couple.

Donja R. Love (Playwright) is an Afro-Queer playwright, poet, and filmmaker. He's The Lark's 2016 Van Lier New Voices Playwriting Fellow, The Playwrights Realm's 2016-2017 Writing Fellow, the 2016 Arch and Bruce Brown Playwriting Award recipient, and a Eugene O' Neill 2017 National Playwrights Conference finalist. He's also the 2011 Philadelphia Adult Grand Slam Poetry Champion. His work has been developed at Manhattan Theatre Club, Rising Circle Theatre, The Lark, and The Playwrights Realm. He's the co-founder of The Each-Other Project, an organization that helps build community and provide visibility, through art and advocacy, for LGBTQ People of Color (www.TheEachOtherProject.com). Select stage-plays include: The Love* Plays (Sugar in Our Wounds, Fireflies, in the Middle), and Soft; Or the Dead N---- Poem (New Dramatists Resident Playwright Semi-finalist). Select film work: Modern Day Black Gay (web series), and Once a Star (short film).

Saheem Ali (Director). Originally from Nairobi, Kenya, Saheem is a director of plays and musicals with an emphasis on new work. Recent credits include Twelfth Night (The Public Theater Mobile Unit), Nollywood Dreams (Cherry Lane Theater), Dot (Detroit Public Theater), The Booty Call (Inner Voices) and A Lesson From Aloes (Juilliard). He has workshopped new plays by Donja R. Love, Jocelyn Bioh, Jen Silverman, Nathaniel Shapiro, Phillip Howze, Eric Micha Holmes, and James Ijames at Playwrights Realm, MCC, New York Stage & Film, National Black Theater and PEN World Voices. He has co-written two musicals with composer Michael Thurber: The Booty Call (Roundabout Underground Reading Series) and Goddess (O'Neill Musical Theater Conference). He was the associate director of The Tempest at The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park. He is a Usual Suspect and former Directing Fellow at New York Theater Workshop. Upcoming productions include Kill Move Paradise at National Black Theater and Where Storms are Born at the Williamstown Theater Festival.

MANHATTAN THEATRE CLUB, under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, has become one of the country's most prominent and prestigious theatre companies. Over the past four and a half decades, MTC productions have earned numerous awards including six Pulitzer Prizes and 23 Tony Awards. MTC has a Broadway home at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) and two Off-Broadway theatres at New York City Center (131 West 55th Street). Renowned MTC productions include Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes; August Wilson's Jitney; Heisenberg by Simon Stephens; The Father by Florian Zeller with translation by Christopher Hampton; Fool For Love by Sam Shepard; Airline Highway by Lisa D'Amour; Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein; Outside Mullingar and Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; The Commons of Pensacola by Amanda Peet; Murder Ballad by Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash; Choir Boy by Tarell Alvin McCraney; The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg; Wit by Margaret Edson; Venus in Fur by David Ives; Good People and Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire; The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez; Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies;Ruined by Lynn Nottage; Proof by David Auburn; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by Charles Busch; Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally; The Piano Lesson by August Wilson; Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley; and Ain't Misbehavin', the Fats Waller musical. For more information on MTC, please visit www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.