JAR OF FAT by Seayoung Yim Announced as Winner of 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize

The 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize, one of the theater world's most prestigious playwriting prizes, will be awarded to Seayoung Yim for her play Jar of Fat. The 2022 award recipient was chosen by 2008 winner Neil Wechsler, 2009 winner Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, 2010 winner Virginia Grise, 2017 winner Jacqueline Goldfinger, 2018 winner Leah Nanako Winkler and 2021 winner Rachel Lynett. As the 2022 Prize winner, Yim receives the David Charles Horn Prize of $10,000, as well as publication of the winning play by Yale University Press and a staged reading.

In a fantastical fairytale world, two Korean American sisters are deemed too fat to fit in their family grave. Will the sisters' close bond survive under the pressure of their community and fretful parents, who will spare no effort to get them tinier? Jar of Fat is an absurdist comedy that explores desire, ugliness, and beauty.

"When I first received the news at winning this prize, I was very much in shock and disbelief," said winner of this year's Prize Seayoung Yim. "After recovering from the initial shock, I feel honored and grateful to receive this award. I thank the cast and director, Tatyana-Marie Carlo, of this play's first workshop production, my graduate school mentors, Lisa D'Amour and Julia Jarcho, for supporting the development of this play. I am also grateful to my artistic communities in Providence and Seattle for nurturing my work. And thanks to my partner, Mario Gómez, whose support has fortified and inspired me."

Jar of Fat is a darkly comedic Korean American fairy tale about the allure and danger entangled within the quest for beauty and thinness," Yim continued. "I offer this play as a struck match to burn some of the accumulated rage at what fatphobia steals from us every day: grace, space, possibility, and breath. As a Korean American, it was important to have this conversation about fatphobia and attractiveness in a culturally specific context to explore the ways these issues present themselves differently from the mainstream Western norms. It is my long-term hope that we collectively dream about and build the capacity to honor all bodies in their ever-changing forms."

In a historic first, this year's Prize, which has traditionally been decided by one award-winning playwright, was decided by a body of six judges who read over 250 plays each - all past winners of the Prize themselves. The six former Prize-winning panelists are 2008 winner Neil Wechsler for Grenadine, chosen by Edward Albee; 2009 winner Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig for Lidless, chosen by David Hare;2010 winner Virginia Grise for blu, chosen by David Hare; 2017 winner Jacqueline Goldfinger for Bottle Fly, chosen by Nicholas Wright; 2018 winner Leah Nanako Winkler for God Said This, chosen by Ayad Akhtar; and 2021 winner Rachel Lynett for Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry (You Too August Wilson), chosen by Paula Vogel.

Now in its fifteenth year of awarding the Yale Drama Series Prize, it is the preeminent playwriting award in cooperation with Yale University Press and is solely sponsored by the David Charles Horn Foundation, which has provided funding for the Yale Drama Series for almost twenty years. The Prize is awarded annually for a play by an emerging playwright after multiple readings by distinguished playwrights of our time. The Yale Drama Series is an annual international open submission competition for emerging playwrights who are invited to submit original, unpublished, full-length, English language plays for consideration. All entries are read blindly.

Rachel Lynett, winner of the 2021 Yale Drama Series Prize, said, "Jar of Fat immediately grabbed my attention from the first page. The voice of the playwright was incredibly strong and especially fun. Reading the play felt like a conversation like the playwright was daring me to play along. I'm always asking myself 'What have I never seen before? What voices are missing from theatre?' This play felt radical but also simply so honest it couldn't be ignored."

Francine Horn, President of the David Charles Horn Foundation, said, "Writers are encouraged to put to paper what is personal and real for them - what they deeply feel. And in the last few years, this is where we've found ourselves - overwhelming burdens on the female members of the family, Culture Clash, conflicting lifestyles bumping against established norms, grief, loss, and disfunction of families. Our current winner, Seayoung Yim, writes brilliantly about this struggle between perceived acceptance, sacrifice, love, and clashing with deeply rooted cultural rituals. She has a magical sense to transform the narrative from horror to humour; from fantasy to reality."

ABOUT SEAYOUNG YIM

Seayoung Yim (SHEE young) is a playwright and educator from Seattle. Her plays include Golf Girl (forthcoming workshop production at Brown University's Writing is Live Festival, directed by Carol Ann Tan), Do It For Umma (People's Choice Award for Outstanding New Play at Theater Puget Sound's Gregory Awards and Seattle's Gypsy Rose Lee Award for Excellence in Local Playwriting), Persimmon Nights (directed by Sara Porkalob at Café Nordo), Jar of Fat (2nd place for the Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award at The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, KCACTF; forthcoming staged reading directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy for the New Works Now Festival at Northern Stage). She was most recently a playwriting fellow at the Sewanee Writers Conference. Seayoung is in her third year as an MFA Playwright at Brown University and the recipient of the Stephen Sondheim Graduate Fellowship in Theater Arts. Her plays have been produced and or developed by Café Nordo, Pork Filled Productions, Theatre Battery, Pony World Theatre, Live Girls! Theater, UW School of Drama, The 14/48 Projects, SIS Productions, Theater Off Jackson. www.seayoungyim.com

To post a comment, you must register and login.