MILL VALLEY, CALIF.: Marin Theatre Company (MTC) has announced the winners of its 2015 new play awards. Rachel Bonds received the 2015 Sky Cooper New American Play Prize winner for her play Swimmers, and Nick Gandiello received the David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize for his play Sunrise Highway. Bonds will receive a $10,000 award in addition to a full production of Swimmers at MTC this fall. Gandiello will receive a $2,500 award, and his play will receive two public staged readings as part of the theatre’s new play reading series.
“This was an incredible year for the prizes as we received more than 960 submissions from many of our most exciting American writers,” said artistic director Jasson Minadakis in a statement.
Norton J. “Sky” Cooper established the New American Play Prize at MTC in 2007 to encourage and celebrate bold new voices for the American stage. The award is given to an established or emerging playwright for an outstanding new work. Cooper also founded the Emerging American Playwright Prize in 2007 to honor playwright David Calicchio, and to recognize new work from an unproduced playwright.
Bonds is a Brooklyn-based playwright from Sewanee, Tenn. Her plays have been produced and developed at New Georges, Ars Nova, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Williamstown Theater Festival, American Theater Company, the McCarter, Roundabout Underground, Manhattan Theatre Club, Two River Theater, The Arden, New York Stage & Film, and SPACE at Ryder Farm. She is an affiliate artist of New Georges, and an alum of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood program and Ars Nova’s Play Group. She is the 2012 recipient of the Samuel French Short Play Festival, and served as the 2013 Writer’s Room Residency at the Arden. Bonds is a graduate of Brown University.
Gandiello is a playwright, screenwriter, and teaching artist based in New York City. His plays include Oceanside, The Wedge Horse, Sunrise Highway, The Blameless, Black Fly Spring, and Swept. His play At the Finish won Smith and Kraus’ Best 10 Minute Plays of 2014, and his play Teeming Shore won the award in 2015. He is an alum of the Ars Nova Play Group, and is the 2015 playwriting fellow at Page 73 Productions. He holds an MFA from the New School for Drama.
