MARIN, CA.: Marin Theatre Company awarded its 7th annual new American play prizes on Tuesday. Artistic director Jasson Minadakis and director of new play development Margot Melcon announced that Dominique Morisseau won the Sky Cooper New American Play Prize and Martyna Majok won the David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize.
“Both Dominique and Martyna represent incredible and exciting new voices in the theatre,” Minadakis said in a statement. “These two women are writing beautifully complex stories of what it means to be an American, but from very different points of view.”
Morisseau took the award for her play Skeleton Crew, about four Detroit auto workers who find themselves in a power struggle when their stamping plant threatens to close during the 2008 recession. The play is the third in Morisseau’s trilogy, The Detroit Projects, which also includes Paradise Blue and Detroit ’67. The Sky Cooper Prize goes to an unproduced play by an American playwright, and the winning play receives a developmental workshop and a staged reading as part of MTC’s New Works Reading Series. The work is also considered for a full production as part of the theatre’s mainstage season, and the playwright takes home $10,000.
Majok won for her play Ironbound, about a Polish immigrant who works as a cleaning lady in New Jersey. The play, which spans 22 years and is set at a single bus stop, was staged as part of MTC’s New Works Reading Series in March with the National New Play Network, and Steppenwolf Theatre’s First Look Repertory of New Work developed the show this summer. Majok is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. The Calicchio Prize goes to a professionally unproduced playwright and comes with a $2,500 cash award. The winning play receives a developmental workshop and a staged reading as part of MTC’s New Works Reading Series.
“Every year, we receive hundreds of extraordinary submissions by playwrights across the country,” Melcon said in a statement. “In the past seven years that we have been administering these prizes, we’ve gotten to read thousands of new plays and gotten to know so many new writers. We’d like to acknowledge the work of all the writers out there who should be celebrated and encouraged to keep doing what they’re doing.”
