Writer and Actor, Dan Ruth, 2018 Bistro Award Winner for Solo Play, is Awarded the 2018 Martha Hill Newell Playwright's Fund

Writer-actor, Dan Ruth, 2018 Bistro Award winner for Solo Play, has been awarded the 2018 Martha Hill Newell Playwright's Fund. Ruth's Play, "A Life Behind Bars" was universally praised by critics during his 2017 runs at the Laurie Beechman Theater. Ruth has also been nominated for a 2018 MAC Award in the category of Spoken Word, the results of which will be announced on March 27th at the annual MAC Awards show at B.B. King's in Times Square, NYC.

Ruth turned his true life experiences of bartending and boozing into a critically lauded, award-winning tale of redemption that's both hilarious and chilling. The play had its genesis in 2015, when, working with long-time collaborator, director Tanya Moberly, Ruth performed A Life Behind Bars to a single sold-out audience on December 19th, 2015 at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side in their main stage theatre. The team later went on to mount sold-out performances at both The Gutter Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and at Theatre Lab in Richmond, Virginia in April and May of 2016 before bringing the show to The United Solo Festival, where won the award for Best Autobiographical Show. In January 2018, Ruth mounted two successful performances at The WhiteFire SoloFest in Los Angeles.
"'A Life Behind Bars' affords the opportunity to watch a gifted actor flex his artistic muscles and mesmerize with a compelling story. An actor of impressive dramatic and comedic strength." -Gerry Geddes, BistroAwards.com

"Ruth, an actor of immense talent who began his career on Richmond stages, brings us 'A Life Behind Bars,' his profane, captivating and masterful one-man show running in The Basement at TheaterLAB." -Tony Farrell, Richmond Times Dispatch

The Martha Hill Newell (MHN) Fund's mission is the commitment to both local and national American Playwrights and holds the belief that the relevance and vitality of American theatre depends upon the continual infusion of new work. The fund believes it is the playwright who is truly the creative wellspring of the theatre and without the writer, this artistic form would cease to exist.

Voting for the MAC awards ends Monday, March 19th at noon.

Photo Credit: Kyle Rucker