Barrington Stage Company Announces Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award

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, has announced the second Burman New Play Award for 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@BarringtonStageCo.org.

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.