Theater News

Playwrights Stephen Adly Guirgis and Samuel D. Hunter Win Prestigious Awards

Recipients of this year’s Mimi Awards and MacArthur Fellowships have been announced.

Stephen Adly Guirgis is the recipient of the 2014 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.
Stephen Adly Guirgis is the recipient of the 2014 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.

Playwrights Stephen Adly Guirgis (Between Riverside and Crazy) and Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale) have been named recipients of prestigious awards for their work.

Guirgis has been honored with the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, which will be presented November 17 during the Seventh Annual Steinberg Playwright "Mimi" Awards. Honoring Guirgis' body of work, which includes The Motherf**ker With the Hat, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, and Our Lady of 121st Street, the prize from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust comes with a cash award of $200,000.

Hunter, whose new drama Pocatello opens off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in November, has been named a 2014 fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and will receive one of it storied "genius" grants. Hunter's plays include A Bright New Boise, The Few, and A Great Wilderness. The MacArthur Fellowship is a no-strings-attached award that comes with a stipend of $625,000 paid out in quarterly installments over five years.

Another 2014 MacArthur Fellowship recipient is cartoonist Alison Bechdel, whose graphic novel-memoir Fun Home has been turned into a forthcoming Broadway musical written by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron.

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