| THE LAURENTS / HATCHER FOUNDATION AWARDS $150,000 TO PLAYWRIGHTS JORDAN HARRISON AND YUSSEF EL GUINDI AS RECIPIENTS OF CITATIONS OF EXCELLENCE | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 11:41 am EST 01/13/25 | |
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| THE LAURENTS / HATCHER FOUNDATION AWARDS $150,000 TO PLAYWRIGHTS JORDAN HARRISON AND YUSSEF EL GUINDI AS RECIPIENTS OF CITATIONS OF EXCELLENCE Harrison's premiere of The Antiquities begins performances at Playwrights Horizons Jan 11. (New York, NY) The Trustees of The Laurents / Hatcher Foundation, Inc. are pleased to announce 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. ARTHUR LAURENTS and TOM HATCHER Arthur Laurents' career as a writer for the stage and screen spanned over 65 years, beginning with his playThe Home of the Brave, which premiered on Broadway in 1945. Known for having written the books for musicals such as Gypsy and West Side Story as well as the screenplays for The Way We Were, The Turning Point and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, Mr. Laurents premiered many of his most recent plays at New Jersey's George Street Playhouse. His final memoir, The Rest of the Story, was posthumously published in 2012. A new revival of Gypsy with Audra McDonald is currently running on Broadway. Tom Hatcher, who died in October 2006, began his career as an actor but moved into real estate as a contractor and then as a developer. He created the private park adjoining the house in Quogue, Long Island that was home for the couple. 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. Playwrights Horizons is a writer's theater committed to the advancement of bold and visionary contemporary playwrights, through the development and production of daring new work and the education of future theatermakers. In a city rich with cultural offerings, Playwrights Horizons' 53-year-old mission is unique among theaters of its size; the organization has distinguished itself by a steadfast commitment to centering the voice of the playwright. It's a mission that is always timely, and one that's necessary in the ongoing evolution of theater in this country. By expanding the U.S. theater canon with a wider range of voices, Playwrights Horizons aims to be a home for the exploration of playwriting and an anti-racist center of curiosity, dialogue, and artistic risk. Playwrights Horizons offers a season of productions annually on their two stages. Each production is a world, U.S., or New York premiere. Additionally, writers are supported in every stage of their growth through the New Works Lab, a commissions program (supporting several of today's most imaginative playwrights each year), and Almanac (a literary magazine about the theatrical art form). Much like Playwrights Horizons' work, their audience is risk-taking and adventurous; and the organization is committed to strengthening their engagement and feeding their curiosity through all of its programming, onsite and online. Ultimately, Playwrights Horizons believes that playwrights are the great storytellers of our time, offering essential contributions to civic discourse and illuminating life's paradoxes. And they believe in the singularity of each writer's voice, valuing the broad, eclectic spectrum and diversity of U.S. writers. Vineyard Theatre (Sarah Stern and Douglas Aibel, Artistic Directors) is one of the country's leading home for the development and production of new plays and musicals, dedicated to nurturing a daring community of artists and audiences and to lifting up voices that resonate far from our stage. The Vineyard has transferred eleven shows to Broadway, including Dana H. by Lucas Hnath; Tina Satter's Is This A Room; Indecent by Paula Vogel; The Lyons by Nicky Silver; The Scottsboro Boys by Kander, Ebb & Thompson; [title of show] by Bell & Bowen; and Avenue Q by Marx, Lopez & Whitty (Tony Award, Best Musical); and four shows revived in their first Broadway productions: the Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel; Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill by Lanie Robertson; Fully Committed by Becky Mode; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Three Tall Women by Edward Albee. Other notable premieres include Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Gloria; Jeremy O. Harris' Daddy; Ngozi Anyanwu's Good Grief; David Cale's Harry Clarke; Tarell Alvin McCraney's Wig Out!, Colman Domingo's Dot; Jenny Schwartz' God's Ear, John J. Caswell Jr's Scene Partners, and many more over 42 years. The Vineyard is proud to be the recipient of special Drama Desk, Obie, and Lucille Lortel Awards for artistic excellence and support of artists. Goodman Theatre is a premier not-for-profit organization distinguished by the excellence and scope of its artistic programming and civic engagement. Committed to core values of Quality, Equity and Community, the Goodman makes inclusion the fabric of the organization through its artistic priorities—including new play development, large scale musical theater works, reimagined classics and education and engagement programming, all of which reach nearly 230,000 patrons each year. Goodman Theatre has earned numerous awards for its work, including two Pulitzer Prizes, 22 Tony Awards including for Outstanding Regional Theatre, recognition by TIME Magazine as the Best American Regional Theater and hundreds of Chicago's Joseph Jefferson Awards. New plays are a major priority at the Goodman, where more than a third of all mainstage productions in the past thirty years have been world premieres. Recent new plays of note include Doug Wright's Good Night Oscar, which won a Tony Award during its 2023 Broadway transfer; Christina Anderson's the ripple, the wave that carried me home, which won the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award; and Rebecca Gilman's Swing State, which was recently recorded as an audio play for national distribution by Audible. |
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