NEW YORK CITY: The Lilly Awards Basis has introduced that MFA playwriting college students Amalia Oliva Rojas of Columbia College, and Danielle Stagger of Yale College would be the inaugural recipients of the Hansberry Lilly Playwright Fellowship. The fellowship comes as a part of the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative to encourage girls and nonbinary playwrights of colour to comply with in Hansberry’s footsteps no matter race, gender, or financial scenario. This advantage and need-based award is designed to handle monetary disparities primarily based on gender and identification, whereas advocating for racial and gender parity within the theatre.

Every fellow will obtain a $25,000 stipend for annually of their matriculation, as much as $75,000 in the course of the course of their graduate diploma. The funds will probably be devoted to dwelling bills not lined by backed tuition to make sure the fellows’ have devoted time for writing, collaboration, and mentorship.

“In over twenty years of instructing at establishments equivalent to Columbia, Princeton and Yale, I can attest to the monetary obstacles which have prevented generations of girls of colour from attending dramatic writing applications,” mentioned Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage in an announcement. “It’s heartbreaking that there are essential voices that go unheard, as a result of the aspiring writers didn’t have the financial sources to spend money on nurturing their craft. We at The Lillys wish to change that. The Hansberry Lilly Playwright Fellowship is a pathway for gifted girls of colour who thought that graduate faculty, and a profession in writing was past their attain.”

On this inaugural 12 months, all girls and nonbinary writers of colour newly or at present enrolled within the graduate playwriting applications at Brooklyn Faculty, Brown College, Columbia College, Juilliard, Northwestern College, NYU-Tisch Faculty of the Arts, College of California San Diego, and Yale College had been inspired to use for this fellowship. This 12 months’s recipients had been chosen by a panel led by playwrights Lydia Diamond and Nikkole Salter.

“These inspiring younger playwrights affirm that of their gifted palms the way forward for the American Theatre is brilliant, mentioned Diamond in an announcement. “And Lord are all of us craving singular voices delivering shifting and entertaining performs about issues that matter.”

In 2024 and past, the Hansberry Lilly Playwright Fellowship will probably be devoted solely to incoming enrollees, and extra colleges with graduate playwriting applications could also be added to the eligible record. The Lillys intention to extend the variety of girls and nonbinary writers of colour who’re in a position to attend such applications. The Dramatists Guild Basis will handle the $2.5 million Hansberry Lilly Playwright Fellowship endowment and administer the awards.

Amalia Oliva Rojas is a Mexican poet, performer, and theatre “artivist” raised and primarily based in Nueva York. She is a proud alumnus of the Vassar Faculty Powerhouse Theater Apprentice Program, CUNY Lehman Faculty, and is at present pursuing her MFA in playwriting at Columbia College. Her performs embrace Tonantzin On the 7 Prepare, A Step-by-Step Information on The right way to Succeed within the Fable-Making Enterprise (Lehman Faculty), The right way to Soften ICE (or How the Coyote fell in love with the lizard who was actually a butterfly) (New York Ladies’s Fund Grant, New Views Theatre Firm and Boundless Theater Firm), and In The Bronx Brown Women Can See Stars Too (Titan Theatre Firm Future Classics Competition).

Danielle Stagger is a playwright and performer from Queens, N.Y. Her work prioritizes the genuine presence of Blackness, queerness, and womanhood each on and offstage. As an artist in observe, she locations explicit emphasis on creating in neighborhood, and regularly works to decentralize and destabilize the product-driven, linear theatrical course of. Danielle has developed work at Second Stage Theater, Manhattan Theater Membership, Efficiency Area New York, Dragon Theatre, and Stanford Repertory Theater. Her work has been a finalist for the O’Neill Nationwide Playwrights Convention, the Ollie New Play Award, and the Lark’s Venturous Playwrights Fellowship. Danielle holds a B.A. in theatre and efficiency research from Stanford College and is at present pursuing an MFA in playwriting on the David Geffen Faculty of Drama at Yale.

The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative seeks to honor the nice American playwright and civil rights chief by investing in these following in her footsteps. Lorraine Hansberry turned the primary Black feminine playwright on Broadway along with her play A Raisin within the Solar in 1959. This initiative goals to maintain the present nationwide dialog about race, justice, and financial equality going by honoring Lorraine Hansberry, including to the rising motion to honor girls and other people of colour with bodily monuments, and assuaging the monetary inequality that daunts girls and non-binary playwrights of colour from pursuing graduate levels in her chosen artwork kind.

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