The Downtown Urban Arts Festival Reveals 22nd Season Award Winners

The DOWNTOWN URBAN ARTS FESTIVAL has revealed the winners of its 22nd season which ran from Wednesday, June 12 - Saturday, June 29!

The annual arts event is held each spring at a renowned New York venue and presents a multicultural mosaic of playwrights, targeting underrepresented writers of color, women and LGBTQIA+. The festival is characterized through works that portray the urban environment and create a genuine hub of plays of cultural expressions and cityscapes that conjure up multifarious visual associations, memories, and experiences signaling the urban city's distinctiveness.

This year's festival featured two nights of performances of SoUNdZ.SaCRoSaNCt, a new work by two-time Tony Award winner Savion Glover at Joe's Pub, two nights of performances of Tiers by Tony Award and Grammy Award Nominee Reg E. Gaines, a humanities event celebrating the 30th anniversary of James Earl Hardy's B-Boy Blues, and 16 performances from Emerging Playwrights at Theatre Row. Of the 16 Emerging Playwrights performances, there were 6 one-acts and 10 shorts.

This year's winners are:

Best Play: SELF TAPE by Daniel Duren
2nd Place: ON/OFF by Elizabeth Shannon
3rd Place: ONE WEEK FROM PARADISE by Cris Eli Blak

Best Short: RECORD by Eduardo Pavez Goye and Rodrigo Muñoz-Medina
2nd Place: COLLECTIVE EMPATHY FORMATION FROM 1968 AND 2018 by Calley N. Anderson
3rd Place: (Tie) EXTRAJUDICIAL by Sheila Duane and SALT FLATS by Juan Ramirez, Jr.

Audience Award: A DISEASED FEELING by Ten Smith and COLLECTIVE EMPATHY FORMATION FROM 1968 AND 2018 by Calley N. Anderson

MEET THE WINNERS:

SELF TAPE by Daniel Duren

Anna gets more than she bargained for as her coaching session with renowned actor, Robert Keusch, comes to an end. In her desperation to get the perfect take, she pleads with him to extend the session. What begins as a heated discourse spirals into deeper conversations about Robert's checkered past.

Daniel Duren is a New York based playwright from St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has been performed in New York City and Minneapolis. This past year Daniel had the pleasure of developing his latest piece, Formido, at Yaddo, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, and Ragdale, followed by a workshop of his absurdist comedy, Come Winter, at Invulnerable Nothings. His award-winning one-act, Self Tape, first premiered at Alchemical Studios, directed by Marc David Wright, presented by Jess Nahikian and Dana Seach. Currently, he is the assistant to playwright Samuel D. Hunter.

ON/OFF by Elizabeth Shannon

Delilah is a lesbian, and Claire is confused. She could never say that, though. What started off as a friendship everyone secretly believed would lead to Claire's coming out is majorly disrupted when Claire gets a boyfriend, Tyler. When Tyler grows increasingly suspicious of Claire and Delilah's friendship, Claire must confront how far she would go to maintain the facade of her straight relationship, and how much she is willing to betray Delilah.

Elizabeth Shannon is a playwright and actor. She attends Marymount Manhattan College, working to obtain her BFA Acting and BA Writing for the Stage degrees. She has completed a residency with Young Playwrights Theatre of DC and is a four time winner of The Blank Theatre's Young Playwrights Festival. She was an inaugural winner of ENOUGH! Plays to End Gun Violence in 2020, having her play "Loaded Language" produced in 47 places across the world and counting. She was the 2023 winner of the Wichita State University Bela Kiralyfalvi National Student Playwriting Competition. She has worked with Baltimore Centerstage, Third Avenue Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, Olney Theatre of DC, The Secret Theatre, Kumu Kahua Theatre, and many others.

ONE WEEK FROM PARADISE by Cris Eli Blak

Imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, a young man learns he will be released in seven days. He must keep his head down and stay out of trouble, which becomes increasingly difficult as his personal relationships begin changing and he becomes hyper-aware of the effects of the prison system.

Cris Eli Blak is an emerging proud Black playwright whose work has been performed around the world. He is the inaugural winner of the Black Broadway Men Playwriting Initiative, the 2024 Charles M. Getchell New Play Award, the Atlanta Shakespeare Company's inaugural winner of the Muse of Fire BIPOC Playwriting Festival, and the Emerging Playwrights Fellowship from The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre. He is currently an artist-in-residence with Abingdon Theatre Company and has had his work published by Smith & Kraus, Inc., YOUTHPlays, Applause Books, New World Theatre, Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble, and in the Black Theatre Review.

RECORD by Eduardo Pavez Goye and Rodrigo Muñoz-Medina

Valerie and Eric are a young political power couple whose day is derailed when a stranger picks up their son from school. When the stranger returns the son to their home, the three spend a tense and at times surreal evening together, where the truth about their history is revealed. Originally written in Spanish and produced for a Chilean audience, the play was first adapted and had a small production in New York in 2021 through a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Eduardo Pavez Goye holds a BA in Theatre Acting. He is a six time winner of the Chilean National Dramatic Writing Contest. Plays published in Chile and Mexico; staged in Chile, Germany, Mexico and the US. Fellow from the Goethe Institut, the International Theater Institut, and Columbia University. Has directed dozens of plays and written over 500 scripts for television and cinema. Screenwriting studies at the Internationale FilmSchule Köln. Current instructor and PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at Columbia University.

Rodrigo Muñoz-Medina has worked in performing arts for almost 30 years. He was part of the National Theater of Chile and his works have been produced in Chile in diverse venues in the country. He has written plays and film scripts, dedicating part of his work to research on theater, memory and human rights. In recent years, he has dedicated himself to writing musical works. He currently works at the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage of his country.

COLLECTIVE EMPATHY FORMATION FROM 1968 AND 2018 by Calley N. Anderson

Five research study participants gather in a conference room. Their task appears simple and straight-forward: select 10 events from the year 1968 that they feel impacted the nation's consciousness and view of empathy. What transpires is a reflection of what is seen, heard, and missed when history, memory, and living bodies must merge in unflinching ways.

Calley N. Anderson is a Brooklyn-based playwright from Memphis, TN. Her work has been staged at several colleges and 10-minute play festivals around the country, including commissions by the Davidson College Theatre Department and the University of Memphis Department of Theatre and Dance. Past and current affiliations include the Page 73 Writers Group, National Black Theatre I AM SOUL Playwright Residency, American Theatre Group BIPOC PlayLab, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Liberation Theatre Company Writing Residency Program, MacDowell, Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group, The Civilians R&D Group, and Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows. MFA: New School for Drama | BA: Davidson College.

EXTRAJUDICIAL by Sheila Duane

There's a world that fate plans for us. Then there's the real world: stained, twisted, and broken by hate.

Sheila Duane is a teacher, playwright, and associate artistic director of a small play-reading program in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Sheila is an alumnus of the DUAF; her plays, The Palmist, The Loom, and Restoration Parts, have been chosen to be part of the festival between 2020 and 2022. Recently, her plays have also been produced at the JSAC in Ocean Grove, in Long Branch, Middletown, Maplewood, NJ, in Florida with Femuscripts, and at the Magnetic Theater in North Carolina.

SALT FLATS by Juan Ramirez, Jr.

In Death Valley Desert, salty Luis embodies the angry people in his life who have left behind negative thoughts in his mind, in hopes of ridding them, to find his own voice and yet, when he's finally able to speak for himself, what will he say?

Juan Ramirez, Jr. is a Nuyorican-Chapín Bronx born-and-raised award-winning and internationally produced playwright and screenwriter, monologist, director, actor, filmmaker and poet. Works selected and produced with EST/SLOAN, Rattlestick, Yaddo, American Theater Group, Theater 4 The People, Pa'lante, Subtext Studio with Destinos Festival, Repertorio Español, Urban Stages, Bronx Council on the Arts, DUAF, Egg & Spoon, IATI, Dramatists Guild, Dramatic Question, Chain Theater, Latinx Playwrights Circle, and more. He's an NYU adjunct, MCC Playwriting Lab Director, resident playwright and facilitator with Art Defined and Dramatists Guild member. Lehman College, BA. Tisch, MFA. www.JuanRamirezJr.com

A DISEASED FEELING by Ten Smith

A coming of age story. Do you remember those moments, at the end of adolescence? I mean, we were never taught how to be men, to be good sons, good lovers; It's just expected of us. So maybe we become sick through the searching, through the worry, through this diseased feeling.

Ten Smith is a playwright and poet from Queens and a recent undergraduate student at Brooklyn College. His plays include, Angels in the Sky, showcased at the Hudson Guild Theatre as a part of the New York Summerfest Theatre Festival and, A Diseased Feeling, showcased at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre, both in 2018. His most recent credit is, A Diseased Feeling, as a part of the SOOP to NUTS Theatre Festival in 2023; and now A Diseased Feeling, DUAF 2024. His work aims to represent the complexities and absurdities of life and human relationships.

Over the past 22 years, DUAF has presented nearly 300 new plays by over 200 emerging and established playwrights including Dominique Morisseau, Martyna Majok, Nelson Diaz-Marcano, Carl Hancock Rux, Craig muMs Grant, and Ming Peiffer. DUAF works have been presented at venues including Cherry Lane, HERE, Joe's Pub, Abrons Arts Center, Wild Project, Nuyorican Poets Café, and Theatre Row.

The DOWNTOWN URBAN ARTS FESTIVAL is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and as part of the Coalition Theaters of Color, a New York City Council initiative to support the operations and programming of theaters and cultural organizations primarily in communities of color. DUAF is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Our Theater program is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov. Arcos Communications is a Founding Sponsor of DUAF.

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