NEW YORK CITY: Parity Productions has announced the winners of the second annual Parity Commission for Women and Transgender Playwrights. Liz Kerin and Azure Osborne-Lee were recognized at the production company’s gala on Sept. 26. The writers will each receive $2,500 and developmental support for their plays, with an option for production.
Parity Productions works to ensure that at least 50% of the creative positions on their productions are held by cis women and or trans and gender-nonconforming artists. They promote gender parity throughout the field with the Qualifying Productions program.
Kerin’s play Stop-Motion was selected for the Botanicum Seedlings development workshop at Theatricum Botanicum and was also shortlisted as a semi-finalist at Premiere Stages. The play was also selected for the Road Theatre’s annual playwright’s festival. Her work has been presented at New York University, FringeNYC, 440 Studios, the Producer’s Club, and with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Kerin is also a screenwriter and is currently writing a television series. Her debut novel “The Phantom Forest” will be released in 2019. She is a graduate of the Dramatic Writing Department at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Osbourne-Lee is a current member of Trans Lab, which is supported by the Public Theater and WP Theater. Their work has been produced and/or developed by Trans Lab, the Tank, the Syndicate, the Flea Theater, BAX|Brooklyn Arts Exchange, BAM, JACK, Rising Circle Theater Collective, the Fire This Time Festival, Horse Trade Theater Group, the Castillo Theatre, the New Ohio Theatre, National Black Theatre, Freedom Train Productions, Downtown Urban Arts Festival, Lambda Literary, the Helix Queer Performance Group, and regionally. Osbourne-Lee is the winner of Downtown Urban Arts Festival’s 2018 Best Play Award and the 2015 Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Play Contest.
