Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival

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This award is offered to the outstanding student-written play that celebrates diversity and encourages tolerance while exploring issues of disempowered voices not traditionally considered mainstream.

One of KCACTF's most distinguished alumna, Paula Vogel won the 1977 National Student Playwriting Award for her play Meg while a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.  Her play How I Learned to Drive received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and has been produced around the world. Ms. Vogel's plays have been performed at theatres such as the Roundabout Theatre Company, the Lucille Lortel Theatre, the Union Square Theatre and Circle Repertory in New York, Arena Stage, the American Repertory Theatre, Perseverance Theatre, the Goodman, the Magic Theatre, Center Stage and Alley Theatre as well as throughout Canada, England, Brazil and Spain. The Baltimore Waltz won the Obie for Best Play in 1992 and her anthology, The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays, has been published by TCG. Other plays include The Mineola Twins, Hot and Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, and The Oldest Profession. Other awards include the AT&T New Plays Award, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, the Kennedy Center’s Legacy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre and Education, the Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center Fellowship, several National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the McKnight Fellowship. She is an Alumna of New Dramatists, and a recent inductee of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. She is currently head of the playwriting program at Yale University.

• First Place is a cash prize of $2500.
• Professional Development Fellowship. The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival will provide the award recipient with an all-expenses paid professional development opportunity.
• Second Place is a cash prize of $1,000 to the playwright.

Dramatists Guild Award. The Dramatists Guild Award provides the playwright with Active membership in the Guild.

The play must be produced by a college or university or publicly presented in a “rehearsed” or “staged reading” format following a significant development process. The play must comply with the guidelines for scripts entered in the KCACTF Michael Kanin Playwriting Program.

For other questions, refer to "Rules and Procedures for the Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards Program" above.

Award Winners

2011

Bacha Bazi (Boy Play) by Gabriel Jason Dean, University of Texas at Austin

2010

PO SUI MU LAM (Broken Prayer) by Robbi D’Alessandro, Leslie University

Runner-up SEMANTICS by Diana Grisanti, University of Texas at Austin

2009 Co-recipients

Ching Chong Chinaman by Lauren Yee, University of California, San Diego

and

May the Devil be Kinder by Alexander Davidson, NYU

2008 (Co-winners)

Deception Pass: An American Story -Kamarie Chapman, University of New Mexico

No One But You - Paul David Young, The New School

2007

Good Worker -Isaac Holter, the Theatre School of DePaul University

2nd place - The Devil's Teacup - Nathan Warren Lane, Playwrights' Theatre of Boston University

2006

The Aaronsville Woman, Stephen Spotswood, Catholic University of America

2nd place - Notes on the Land of Earthquake and Fire Jason Schaefer, New York University

2005

Social Darwinism, Angela Gant, Texas Tech University

2004

Jasper Lake, John Kuntz of the Playwrights' Theatre of Boston University

2003

Yemaya's Belly, by Quiara Alegría Hudes, Brown University

2002

Edible Shoes, by Jonathan Yukich, Indiana University, produced by Wichita State University