American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award Heads to London

The American Playwriting Foundation is partnering with London's Old Vic and Theatre503 to bring the Relentless Award recipients to the United Kingdom.

Established in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman and his pursuit of truth in the theater, the Relentless Award presents the largest annual grant in American theater to an unproduced play. This new partnership will provide eight American playwrights per year with an opportunity to create artistic relationships with the British theater community.

The Old Vic will annually present a staged reading of the Relentless Award-winning play in London, featuring a British cast and director, and the eight Relentless Award finalists and semifinalists will be part of a weeklong reading series at Theatre503, a 60-seat new writing powerhouse situated in Battersea, South London, that launches the work of more new writers than any other theater in the U.K.

The American Playwriting Foundation will have a ceremony on March 26 at the Cherry Lane Theatre to present Aleshea Harris with the 2016 Relentless Award for her play Is God Is. The Play Selection Committee comprises Eric Bogosian, Thomas Bradshaw, David Bar Katz, Dominique Morisseau, Lynn Nottage, John Ortiz, Jonathan Marc Sherman, and Lucy Thurber.