FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BSC Press Director Charlie Siedenburg – 551-655-0968
Charlie_siedenburg@yahoo.com
ANNOUNCES
BONNIE AND TERRY BURMAN
NEW PLAY AWARD
$25,000 PRIZE
AWARDED TO A WINNING PLAYWRIGHT
NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
(Pittsfield, MA– December 20, 2019) After the success of the inaugural Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award in 2018, Barrington Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, is proud to announce the second Burman New Play Award in 2020.
Barrington Stage seeks a bold, original voice in the American Theatre. The winning playwright will receive $25,000, a staged reading and a possible full production. Two additional $5,000 awards will be given to playwrights who will each receive a staged reading at Barrington Stage.
The 2018 Grand Prize winner was Stacey Rose for her play America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of The American Negro; and the additional awards were given to Brent Askari for his play American Underground and Christina Quintana for her play Citizen Scientist. Both Rose’s and Askari’s plays received world premiere productions at BSC in 2019.
Submissions will open on January 2, 2020 and will close April 30, 2020. There is no fee for entry. Scripts will be read and evaluated through a blind submission process by committee assembled by BSC. A group of finalist plays will be read and evaluated by the New Play Award Committee, composed of distinguished artists in Fall 2020. Winners will be announced in late 2020.
The play must be a new, unproduced full-length play; be free and not attached to any producers or directors; be able to be performed with 8 actors or less; be wholly original and not an adaptation or translation of an existing foreign language play. The playwright must be a U.S. resident and may only submit one play for consideration. The play must be endorsed by a professional theatre, commercial producer or literary agent.
For more information about the submission process, or if you have any questions about the award or the application, please email Megan Nussle, Burman Award Project Coordinator, at NewPlayAward@
Barrington Stage would like to thank Bonnie and Terry Burman for recognizing the importance of discovering and supporting vital new voices in the American Theatre.
ABOUT BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY
Barrington Stage Company (BSC) is an award-winning regional theatre located in Pittsfield, MA, in the heart of the Berkshires. Co-founded in 1995 by Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, BSC has a three-fold mission: to present top-notch, compelling work; to develop new plays and musicals; and to find fresh, bold ways of bringing new audiences into the theatre—especially young people. Barrington Stage commissioned and produced the world premiere of Christopher Demos-Brown’s American Son, which also won the Laurents/Hatcher Award for Best New Play by an Emerging Playwright in 2016 and recently concluded a Broadway run, starring Kerry Washington. Barrington Stage first garnered national attention in 2004 when it premiered William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s musical hit The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which later transferred to Broadway where it won two Tony Awards. In 2009, BSC premiered Mark St. Germain’s Freud’s Last Session, which later moved Off Broadway and played for two years. St. Germain’s Becoming Dr. Ruth (which premiered at BSC as Dr. Ruth, All the Way) played Off Broadway at the Westside Theatre. BSC’s all-time record-breaking musical On the Town was originally produced at BSC in 2013 before transferring to Broadway, where it was nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Musical Revival. In 2016, Barrington Stage swept the first annual Berkshire Theatre Awards by winning 20 out of the 25 awards. In 2017, BSC produced the much-lauded revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company, starring Aaron Tveit. In 2018, BSC produced the critically-acclaimed production of West Side Story in honor of Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins’ 100th birthdays. BSC has won the Best of the Berkshires Readers’ Choice for Best Live Theatre for the past three years. 2019 marked BSC’s 25th Season Anniversary.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT
WWW.BARRINGTONSTAGECO.ORG
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