WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.: Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced that Sanaz Toossi has been awarded with the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award for her play English. Toossi will receive a $10,000 award, a reading at Williamstown Theatre Festival, optional publication by Samuel French, and the $10,000 Jay Harris Commission to write a new play.
Toossi is an Iranian American playwright whose play Wish You Were Here will have its world premiere as part of Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 2020 Nikos Stage season. A member of Youngblood and the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at the Lark, Toossi is under commission at the Atlantic Theater, South Coast Repertory, IAMA Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her winning play, English, was also on the 2019 Kilroys’ List.
The award recognizes excellence in playwriting and honors theatrical attorney and avid theatre supporter L. Arnold Weissberger. Finalists for this year’s award were Cullud Wattah by Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Don’t Eat the Mangoes by Ricardo Peréz González, White History by Dave Harris, The Feast by Deborah Stein, and The Great Moment by Anna Ziegler. The finalists were judged by Adam Bock, Donja R. Love, Rhon Manigault-Bryant, Marjan Neshat, and Robert O’Hara.
Nominations for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award are solicited by invitation only. The award is administered on behalf of the Anna L. Weissberger Foundation.
