NEW YORK CITY: The American Playwriting Foundation has awarded Harrison David Rivers the 2018 Relentless Award for his play The Bandaged Place. Established in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman, the award recognizes a theatrical work that explores truth. Rivers will receive a cash prize of $45,000.
In The Bandaged Place, a man attempts to free himself from his past when a former ex-lover resurfaces and reopens a painful wound. A series of readings will be presented at theatres across the U.S. and at London’s Old Vic. The play was previously developed at Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.
The winning play was selected from more than 2,000 blind submissions. The 2018 selection committee included Eric Bogosian, Thomas Bradshaw, David Bar Katz, Lynn Nottage, and Jonathan Marc Sherman.
The 2018 Relentless finalists are The 626 Project by Lisa Sanaye Dring and The Girl is Chained by Genne Murphy. The semifinalists are The Absentee by Julia Doolittle, cullud wattah by Erika Dickerson-Despenza, The End of a Sound by Ann Gillespie, littleghost by Liza Birkenmeier, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord by Alexis Scheer, suspension by Kristiana Colón, and With Great Difficulty Alice Sits by Hannah Kenah.
Previous Relentless winner included Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, Clare Barron’s Dance Nation, Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is, and Pussy Sludge by Gracie Gardner.
