NEW YORK CITY: Parity Productions has named playwrights Melisa Annis and Corbin Went as the recipients of the company’s inaugural Annual Parity Commission for Women and Transgender Playwrights. The winners were presented with awards on Oct. 25 in New York City, and playwright Jordan Puckett received an honorable mention. Annis and Went each received an award of $2,500, and will get one closed reading and one public reading of the commissioned work, with an optional production.

“Melisa and Corbin are quite different in the way that they tell stories, but each playwright is supremely talented and the works they have chosen to further develop with us are extraordinarily engaging, thought-provoking, and moving,” said Parity’s

producing artistic director Jennifer Kranz in a statement. The theatre company hires at         least 50 percent women and    transgender artists on each of their productions, and encourages other New York City theatre companies to do the same with its Qualifying Productions program.  The company will continue to award two commissions annually.

“I’ve long been a fan of the advocacy work they (Parity Productions) have been doing and I am so honored and excited to be a recipient of Parity’s first Commission for Women and Transgender Playwrights,” said Annis in a statement.

“It is emblematic of Parity’s enthusiastic work championing women and trans artists that they would create this commission, which is more than a financial award,” said Went in a statement. “It is an opportunity to create opportunity.”