Barrington Stage Names Winner of New Play Award
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Barrington Stage Company has named Stacey Rose as the inaugural winner of The Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award, a new national play contest at BSC.
Rose will be awarded $25,000 and her play, "America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro," will receive a world premiere production at BSC.
"There are few words for how honored I am to be the inaugural recipient of the Bonnie & Terry Burman New Play Award," Rose said. "Having the play produced, as well, meets and exceeds my wildest dreams for the world premiere of this play."
Set in the not too distant future, "America v. 2.1" is a day in the life of a troupe of black actors who are charged with re-enacting the revised history of the once-thriving American Negro. It quickly becomes a day of reckoning as the troupe is forced to face the parallels their own lives draw to the lives of the very Negroes whose stories they are compelled to tell.
Rose hails from Elizabeth, N.J., and Charlotte, N.C., respectively. She's an alum of the MFA program in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been presented at The Fire This Time Festival, The Brooklyn Generator, The Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Mosaic Theater, The Amoralists Theatre Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, National Black Theatre, Pillsbury House Theatre and The Lark’s Playwrights' Week.
Rose was a 2015-16 Dramatist Guild Fellow, a 2017-18 Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellow and a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow. She is a 2018-2021 Playwrights’ Center Core Writer, a member of The Goodman Theatre's Playwrights Unit and The Civilians R&D Group. Her work celebrates and explores blackness, black identity, black history, body politics and the dilemma of life as the "other."
The second-place winners, Brent Askari and Christina Quintana, will each receive $5,000 and a developmental staged reading.
In Askari's "American Underground," an interracial couple enjoys a visit from their college-aged son when a young Muslim woman arrives at their back door looking for safe passage via a new Underground Railroad. This riveting thriller takes us inside a stark vision of an unapologetic America. In Quintana's "Citizen Scientist," Kian, an actuary, and Neema, an astronomer, meet exploring the starfield for exoplanets and battling their recent losses. Together, they discover the planet Kepler-64b and learn what it means to be present here on Earth.
"Barrington Stage is thrilled to bring to life this summer Stacey Rose’s play, 'America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro,' a provocative, uncompromising look at black Americans in post-apocalyptic America, and both Brent Askari and Christina Quintana share Stacey’s sense of urgency in telling stories that need to be heard now," said Artistic Director Julianne Boyd.
The winning plays were chosen out of 461 plays that were submitted, which were culled down to 70 semi-finalists and then seven finalists. In addition to the three winning plays, the other finalists for the Burman Award included "Steal Her Bones" by Thomas Gibbons; "Eight Nights" by Jennifer Maisel; "2144 South St." by Karina Billini; and "(End of Message)" by Laura Jacqmin.
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