Jordan E. Cooper, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and Sylvia Khoury Win 2021 Whiting Awards | Playbill

Awards Jordan E. Cooper, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and Sylvia Khoury Win 2021 Whiting Awards The playwrights scored for their recent work in drama.
Jordan E. Cooper, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and Sylvia Khoury

Playwrights Jordan E. Cooper, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and Sylvia Khoury have been named the 2021 Whiting Award winners for drama. The announcement was made during a virtual ceremony April 14. Each theatre artist will receive a $50,000 prize.

The awards, created in 1986, are given to recognize early-career achievement and to empower recipients to fulfill the promise of exceptional literary work to come. This year’s digital honors included a keynote by former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith, a 2005 Whiting Award winner, and brief readings from each winner, introduced by 2015 winner Elena Passarello.

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Jordan E. Cooper Joan Marcus

Cooper (Black Boy Fly, Alice Wonder) wrote and starred in the world premiere of Ain’t No Mo’ at The Public Theater in 2019. The satirical odyssey depicts a great exodus of Black Americans. During the pandemic, the theatre artist received a Steinberg Playwright Award and created the short film Mama Got a Cough, starring Tony nominees Danielle Brooks and Da'Vine Joy Randolph.

Grays (Warriors Don’t Cry, Last Night and the Night Before) wrote and starred in the world premiere of Where We Stand in 2020 at the WP Theater. During the pandemic, the theatre artist joined the Geffen Playhouse’s The Writers' Room 2020–2021 cycle and received The New York Community Trust’s Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, along with a Lilly Award. A virtual production of Where We Stand will debut later this month as part of Steppenwolf’s NOW season.

READ: Queer Black Playwrights to Know and Support

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Darius Homayoun and Dina Shihabi Jeremy Daniel

Khoury (The Place Women Go, Against the Hillside) was most recently represented Off-Broadway with LCT3’s production of Power Strip at Lincoln Center Theater’s Claire Tow Theater. Her play, Selling Kabul, will plat at Playwrights Horizons in the upcoming season after being delayed due to the pandemic. In the past year, the playwright was named a Williamstown Theatre Festival Artist-in Residence and wrote a piece for the final edition of The Homebound Project.

READ: Meet the Playwright Debuting 2 Plays in 1 Season—and Going to Med School at the Same Time

Additional winners included fiction writers Steven Dunn and Tope Folarin, nonfiction authors Joshua Bennett and Sarah Stewart Johnson, and poets Marwa Helal, Ladan Osman, and Xandria Phillips.

Past winners include 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and finalist Will Arbery (Heroes of the Fourth Turning), as well as Tony Kushner, Susan-Lori Parks, August Wilson, Sarah Ruhl, and Lucas Hnath.

Production Photos: Where We Stand with the WP Theater and Baltimore Center Stage

 
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