Stephen Karam to Receive Dramatists Guild of America's Horton Foote Playwriting Award Tonight

The Dramatists Guild of America has announced that they will present for the first time the new Horton Foote Playwriting Award, which will be awarded to playwright Stephen Karam at the Dramatists Guild's annual awards presentations tonight, Monday, February 22, 2016, at the American Airlines Theatre Penthouse Lobby. The Richenthal Foundation is sponsoring the award.

This new playwriting award 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 will be administered by the Dramatists Guild Fund and presented annually at the Guild's awards presentation.

Stephen Karam is the author of The Humans (recently opened on Broadway) and Sons of the Prophet, a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and the recipient of the 2012 Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and the DG's Hull-Warriner Awards for Best Play. Other plays include Speech & Debate, the inaugural production of Roundabout Underground; and columbinus (New York Theatre Workshop). He wrote the libretto for Dark Sisters, an original chamber opera with composer Nico Muhly. Stephen is a MacDowell Colony fellow, and the recipient of the inaugural Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Drama Desk Award. He teaches playwriting at The New School.

The Horton Foote Playwriting Award will be presented by David Richenthal, Executive Director of the Richenthal Foundation, on behalf on the Dramatists Guild of America. The award will be presented on Monday, February 22 alongside awards to Stephen Adly Guirgis, recipient of the Hull-Warriner Award for his play Between Riverside and Crazy; Lin-Manuel Miranda, recipient of the Frederick Loewe Award for Dramatic Composition for his score to Hamilton; Dael Orlandersmith, recipient of the Flora Roberts Award; Lauren Gunderson, recipient of the Lanford Wilson Award; and Stephen Schwartz and Marsha Norman, co-recipients of the Dramatists Guild Career Achievement Award. The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund will also present their third DLDF Defender Award to Edward J. Davis Esq. of Davis Wright Tremaine, an attorney who recently successfully defended playwright David Adjmi in his recent fair use case regarding his play 3C.

Photo by Walter McBride