NEW YORK CITY: The Dramatists Guild of America announced today that they will bestow their first Horton Foote Playwriting Award to Stephen Karam at the Dramatists Guild’s annual awards presentations tonight in the American Airlines Theatre penthouse lobby. The Richenthal Foundation is sponsoring the award (not to be confused with the Horton Foote Prize, also given to playwrights).
The new award will bestow $25,000 on a dramatist whose work “seeks to plumb the ineffable nature of being human,” according to a statement. The honor is named after the Pulitzer-winning playwright, who died in 2009. Due to Foote’s long association with the Dramatists Guild, the award will be administered by the Dramatists Guild Fund and presented annually at the Guild’s awards presentation.
Stephen Karam is the author of The Humans, which opened last week on Broadway, and Sons of the Prophet, a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer (which was published in AT Dec. ’17). His other plays include Speech & Debate, the inaugural production of Roundabout Underground, and columbinus at New York Theatre Workshop. He wrote the libretto for Dark Sisters, an original chamber opera with composer Nico Muhly. Stephen is a MacDowell Colony fellow and the recipient of the inaugural Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Drama Desk Award. He teaches playwriting at the New School.
The Horton Foote Playwriting Award will be presented by David Richenthal, executive director of the Richenthal Foundation, on behalf on the Dramatists Guild of America. The award will be presented alongside awards to Stephen Adly Guirgis, recipient of the Hull-Warriner Award for his play Between Riverside and Crazy; Lin-Manuel Miranda, recipient of the Frederick Loewe Award for Dramatic Composition for his score to Hamilton; Dael Orlandersmith, recipient of the Flora Roberts Award; Lauren Gunderson, recipient of the Lanford Wilson Award; and Stephen Schwartz and Marsha Norman, co-recipients of the Dramatists Guild Career Achievement Award. The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund will also present their third DLDF Defender Award to Edward J. Davis Esq. of Davis Wright Tremaine, an attorney who recently successfully defended playwright David Adjmi in his recent fair use case regarding his play 3C.
