NEW YORK CITY: The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust has announced the names of the two outstanding early-to-mid-career playwrights who will be celebrated with 2024 Steinberg Playwright Awards in the amount of $100,000 each.  This year’s recipients of the “Mimi” Awards are Christina Anderson and Mfoniso Udofia.

The “Mimi” Awards are presented annually to playwrights in early and middle stages of their careers who have distinctive and compelling voices, and whose work exhibits exceptional talent and artistic excellence. The awards celebrate their accomplishments and honor the promise they hold for the future of American theatre. 

Born and raised in Kansas City, Kans., Christina Anderson is a playwright, screenwriter, and educator. Anderson’s plays include: the ripple, the wave that carried me home, How to Catch Creation, Man in Love, Good Goods, The Ashes Under Gait City, Hollow Roots, Blacktop Sky, and pen/man/ship. Her work has been produced across the country, including at Kansas City Repertory Theatre, the Acting Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Geva Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Baltimore Center Stage, and Yale Repertory Theatre.

Mfoniso Udofia is a first-generation Nigerian American storyteller and educator. Productions include Sojourners at the Huntington, Round House Theatre and The Grove, also at the Huntington. Her work has also been seen at New York Theatre Workshop, American Conservatory Theater, Playwrights Realm, Magic Theater, National Black Theatre, Strand Theater, and Boston Court. Mfoniso has written on acclaimed shows like 13 Reasons Why on Netflix, A League of Their Own on Amazon, Let the Right One In on Showtime, and Pachinko, Little America, and Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV+.

NEW YORK CITY: The Lucille Lortel Theatre has announced that four new musicals will receive support through the 121 Project, the Lortel’s tailored development program for new musical works. The recipients of the 121 Project are Built for This, with book by Lauren Gunderson, and music and lyrics by Kira Stone; King of Harlem with book, music, and lyrics by David Gomez and book by John-Michael Lyles; Legendary with book, music, and lyrics by Cheeyang Ng; and Lighthouse with book and lyrics by abs wilson, and music and lyrics by Veronica Mansour. The initiative provides up to $10,000 of tailored support for the specific needs of a project.

Lauren Gunderson is one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list thrice, including in 2022-23. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Arthur L. Weissberger Award, and John Gassner Award for Playwriting. Kira Stone is a composer, lyricist, songwriter, playwright, performer, and music producer fueled by the rhythms and rhymes of pop and hip-hop music, and led by the storytelling of musical theatre. Her current musicals include SALEM, Revival, and a new thriller/dark comedy musical about a secret society of killer housewives, with a book by Matthew Greene.

David Gomez is a composer, lyricist, and librettist whose musicals include Malinche, The Blue Shoes, Miss Havishham’s Wedding, R and J, Feet Keep Me Flying, Sugarplum, and Adelita. The King of Harlem has received support from the Kurt Weill Foundation Songbook Series and the Musical Theatre Factory MAKERS program, and was a finalist for the Relentless Award through the American Playwriting Foundation. John-Michael Lyles is an Obie-winning actor with a BFA in musical theatre from Pace University who has originated two roles on Broadway: in the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning A Strange Loop, and in The Heart of Rock & Roll. At NYC’s Barrow Street, he performed in the Pulitzer-winning play, The Flick and played Tobias in their critically acclaimed Sweeney Todd.

Born and raised in Singapore, Cheeyang Ng is an award-winning singer-songwriter who writes at the intersection of queer, Asian, and immigrant stories. They have performed around the world, including Lincoln Center with Carole King and Carnegie Hall with Jason Robert Brown. Veronica Mansour is a composer/lyricist/artist. She is a 2024 Richard Rodgers Award winner and Jonathan Larson Grant winner, 2024 Dramatist Guild Fellow, and was recently nominated for a Marvin Hamlisch International Music Award (Musical Theatre Composition), selected as one of four writers for DreamWorks Theatricals, MTI & NBC Universal Emerging Writers Program. She is currently commissioned to write How To Train Your Dragon Jr.

abs wilson is a playwright/lyricist originally from Minnesota and now based in NYC. She’s a recipient of the 2024 Richard Rodgers Award, a selected writer for the National Musical Theatre Alliances’s New Musical Festival, Eugene O’Neill National Music Theater Conference winner, selected writer for the musical theatre Rhinebeck Writer’s Retrea, and a selected writer for the Syracuse New Works New Voices program, and others.

NEW YORK CITY and LONDON: The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has announced this year’s finalists for the prestigious international playwriting award, now in its 47th year and the largest and oldest award recognizing women+ writers for plays of outstanding quality written for the English-speaking theatre.  

The nine finalists, chosen from more than 200 submissions, are:

• Chris Bush (U.K.), Otherland
• Carys Coburn (Ireland), BÁN
• Keiko Green (U.S.), You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World
• Haruna Lee (Taiwan-Japan-U.S.), 49 Days
• Isobel McArthur (U.K.-Scotland), The Fair Maid of the West
• Suzie Miller (Australia-U.K.), Inter Alia
• a.k. payne (U.S.), Furlough’s Paradise
• Else Went (U.S.), An Oxford Man
• Anna Ziegler (U.S.), The Janeiad

The 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize will announce the winner at a celebration attended by writers, theatre artists, artistic leaders, and supporters in New York City at Playwrights Horizons on March 10. The winner will be awarded $25,000 and will also receive a signed and numbered print by renowned artist Willem de Kooning, created especially for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. A special commendation of $10,000 may be given at the discretion of the judges, and each finalist will receive $5,000.

Founded in 1978, the Prize is awarded annually to celebrate women+ who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre.