The Laurents / Hatcher Foundation Awards $150,000 to Playwrights Jordan Harrison and Yussef El Guindi

The Trustees of The Laurents / Hatcher Foundation, Inc. have announced that The Antiquities by Jordan Harrison and Refugee Rhapsody by Yussef El Guindi are recipients of the Laurents / Hatcher Foundation Citation of Excellence.

Harrison and El Guindi will each receive $25,000 for their work, and Playwrights Horizons a co-producer of The Antiquities will receive $50,000 for the production now running off-Broadway.

Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Adam Greenfield said, "Along with our co-producers The Goodman Theatre and the Vineyard Theatre, Playwrights Horizons is honored and grateful for the recognition of Jordan's new play. The Antiquities casts us far into a future that is inhumane in its most literal sense, a future that is in search of its past. But the real subject of this play is the present, where it seems we're holding onto our humanity by a thread. What better place to interrogate what 'human' means at all than in a theater, sharing real space and time together to experience a play? The Antiquities not only is an appeal that we return to ourselves; it makes a case for theater's unique ability to guide us there. Thanks to the Laurents / Hatcher Foundation for its ongoing support of urgent new works."

Upon receiving the news of the award, El Guindi said, “In the midst of these too vivid times when we are all beset with much turbulence and uncertainty, it is encouraging to have one’s efforts affirmed in this way. And to receive it for a play that tries, in its own particular way, to address the drama and comedic peril of a group of people that often slip under the radar is doubly encouraging.” 

THE LAURENTS / HATCHER FOUNDATION

Established in 2010, The Laurents/Hatcher Foundation provides over $1.5 million in grants annually supporting new work at theaters throughout the country. In addition, The Laurents / Hatcher Foundation Award is an annual prize of $150,000 given to an un-produced, full-length play by an early-career American playwright. 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 (Gypsy, West Side Story) and his partner of 52 years, Tom Hatcher.

Jordan Harrison was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Marjorie Prime, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum and had its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons.  His new play, The Antiquities, will premiere jointly at Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre and Goodman Theatre in the 2024/2025 season. Other plays include Maple and Vine (American Conservatory Theater, Playwrights Horizons), The Amateurs (Vineyard Theatre), Log Cabin (Playwrights Horizons), The Grown-Up (Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville), Doris to Darlene (Playwrights Horizons), Amazons and their Men (Clubbed Thumb), Act A Lady (Humana Festival), Finn in the Underworld (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), Futura (Portland Center Stage and NAATCO), Kid-Simple (Humana Festival), The Museum Play, and a musical, Suprema (O'Neill Music Theatre Conference), written with Daniel Zaitchik. 

Jordan is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, the Horton Foote Prize, the Kesselring Prize, the Roe Green Award, the Heideman Award, a Theater Masters Innovative Playwright Award, the Loewe Award for Musical Theater, Jerome and McKnight Fellowships, a NYSCA grant, and a NEA/TCG Residency. His children's musical, The Flea and the Professor, written with Richard Gray, won the Barrymore Award for Best Production after premiering at the Arden Theatre. A graduate of Stanford University and the Brown MFA program, Jordan is an alumnus of New Dramatists.

 As a screenwriter, Jordan's credits include three seasons of the Netflix original series "Orange is the New Black." Other TV/film: Netflix's "G.L.O.W.", AMC's "Dispatches From Elsewhere," and a feature script for Pixar. A film adaptation of Marjorie Prime, directed by Michael Almereyda, premiered in the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Prize

Yussef El Guindi’s work frequently examines the collision of ethnicities, cultures and politics that face immigrants, Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans in particular. El Guindi holds an MFA in playwriting from Carnegie-Mellon University. He is the recipient of many honors, including the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, the Stranger’s Genius Award, and the 2010 Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award. El Guindi's past productions include “Hotter Than Egypt” at Marin Theatre Company, ACT in Seattle, and at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (Henry Award winner); “People of the Book” at ACT; “Language Rooms” at the Wilma Theatre, Pony World Theatre in Seattle, and Broken Nose Theatre in Chicago; "Hostages" at Radial Theater Project in Seattle; "The Talented Ones" at UCSB’s LAUNCH PAD and Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland (Santa Barbara Independent Indy Awards); "Threesome" at Portland Center Stage, ACT, and at 59E59 (winner of a Portland Drammy for Best Original Script);  "Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World" (2011 Gregory Award) also at ACT, Center Repertory Company at Walnut Creek, CA, and at Mosaic Theater Company (DC). "Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat" was produced by Silk Road Rising and won the M. Elizabeth Osborn award. His plays "Back of the Throat" (winner of L.A. Weekly's Excellence in Playwriting Award for 2006), "Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World", "Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes", "Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda and Karima’s City” have been published by Dramatists Play Service. "Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith", "Collaborator", "Threesome", "The Talented Ones”, “Hostages" and “In A Clear Concise Arabic Tongue” have been published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc. Bloomsbury/ Methuen Drama published "Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi”. In 2023, he was selected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in the U.K.

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