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* * * 2009-2010 * * *
The Julie Harris
Playwright Award
FIRST AWARD TO:
REFUGE by Marc Kornblatt:
Two men meet on a secluded boardwalk along a
marsh in a bird sanctuary in the Midwest. Jim
brings a notepad and a gun. Laz brings a pile of
pills and a six-pack of beer. By the end of their
first encounter, the pills are consumed and the gun
goes off. Both men live. Jim and Laz meet again
and again in the same place to argue, cajole, circle
and embrace in a somber yet funny dance of death
that also draws Jim’s burdened wife and Laz’s
yearning girlfriend to the marsh to seek refuge and
renewal.
Marc Kornblatt of
Madison, WI began his theater career as an acting
apprentice at Peterborough Playhouse in New
Hampshire nearly four decades ago. After college
(Brandeis University), he moved to New York City
where he appeared sporadically Off-Off Broadway and
was seen, but rarely heard, in films directed by
Woody Allen, Ken Russell, Walter Hill and Sylvester
Stallone, among others. Between acting jobs, he
began writing plays. He has worked as a newspaper
reporter, earned a master’s degree in journalism
(New York University), published seven children’s
books and had plays produced in New York City, Los
Angeles, Detroit, Memphis, Ft. Lauderdale and
Madison, Wisconsin, where he lives with his wife and
teaches elementary school.
SECOND AWARD TO:
THE CARDIFF GIANT by Thomas Hischak:
In the 1860s, self-made
businessman George Hull creates a giant statue and
passes it off as a prehistoric man petrified to
stone. The newspaperman Calvin Triplett breaks the
story and soon thousands of people are paying as
much as a dollar to look at the discovery. Experts
call the creature everything from a petrified man to
a prehistoric statue to a total hoax. The notorious
King of Humbug, Phineas T. Barnum, offers Hull
$60,000 for the giant even though he knows it is a
fake. Hull turns Barnum down so the showman has his
own statue created and soon he is hawking it as the
“original” giant and selling tickets to see his
version in New York City. Reporter Triplett
stumbles across some evidence that the giant was
manufactured by Hull and sets out to find the truth.
But do Americans want the truth? Or do they prefer
a sensation?
Thomas Hischak of Cortland, New York is an
internationally recognized scholar. He is the
author of twenty-five published plays and
twenty-three books on American theatre, film,
musical theatre, popular music, and movie musicals,
including the award-winning “The Oxford Companion.”
His plays are produced across the United States as
well as in Canada and Great Britain. He is
Professor of Theatre at the State University of New
York College at Cortland where he received the
Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and
Creative Activity in 2004. He is also a Fulbright
Scholar and has taught and directed American theatre
and film in Greece.
THIRD AWARD TO:
FARINGDON FOLLIES: The Making of a Grand Eccentric
by Bob Canning: Based on the unconventional
life of Lord Berners (1883-1950), composer, writer,
painter and eccentric, Berners was influenced by
some of the world's most creative, talented and
quirky personalities of his time, and some (e.g.,
Noel Coward, Salvador Dali and Gertrude Stein)
appear as characters in the play. He enjoyed going
through the town of Faringdon wearing a pig mask and
frightening the villagers, blowing bubbles in
restaurants, inviting a pet horse into the drawing
room for his tea parties, while the fantail doves on
his estate were hand-dyed every color of the
rainbow, a tradition that continues to this day. In
1935, the madcap Berners also built the last folly
(or tower) in England, but it was for his music,
books and paintings that he is best remembered.
Bob Canning of Petulama,
CA studied comedy writing with Danny Simon (Neil’s
brother), playwriting with Oliver Hailey and Doric
Wilson, and musical theatre at the Lehman Engel
Musical Theatre Workshop. He was a writer for the
Walt Disney Studios for 14 years and lived to tell
about it. He is a contributing writer for the
Harper Collins book, “George Lucas's Blockbusting
Movies,” which is now in its third printing. On
July 11, 2010, this play about Lord Berners will
have a staged reading in the village of Faringdon,
UK, to be headlined by well-known British stage and
film actor Jeremy
Bulloch.
PLAY COMPETITION FOR YOUTH THEATRE
MARILYN HALL AWARDS
* * * 2009-2010 * * *
FIRST AWARD TO:
YOUNG FREDERICK DOUGLASS by
Walt Vail: In 1828,
fourteen-year-old Frederick Douglass, then known as
Freddy Bailey, is sent to Baltimore, Maryland as a
companion slave to twelve-year-old Tommy Auld. There
Freddy teaches himself to read and write. He
attempts to teach other slaves, gets in trouble and
is re-assigned to plantation field work with a slavebreaker. Beaten down at first, Freddy rises to
defeat and to humiliate his slavebreaker. After
conspiring to escape slavery, Freddy is jailed,
threatened with being sold down to Mississippi or
possible death. Three years later, he plans his
freedom and, obtaining a free black sailor’s papers,
finally escapes slavery forever by boarding a train
to Baltimore. He becomes one of America’s great
leaders in the struggle to abolish slavery.
Walt Vail of Pitman, NJ
earned a Master’s degree in Playwriting at Penn
State. He has been Literary Manager for Society
Hill Playhouse in Philadelphia, and for Hedgerow
Theatre in Pennsylvania. He also acted in theatres
in the Delaware Valley, PA area. His play HATTIE’S
DRESS was produced Off-Broadway in New York by The
Open Eye: New Stagings. Recent productions were
done by The Vagabond Acting Troupe of Philadelphia
and by Love Creek Productions of New York. He is a
lifetime member of the Philadelphia Dramatists
Center, an active member of The National Dramatists
Guild, and a recipient of a New Jersey Council on
the Arts Fellowship.
SECOND AWARD TO:
EROS AND PSYCHE by Jessica Puller:
When Aphrodite, the
goddess of beauty, learns that she has competition
with a moral girl named Psyche, she sends her son
Eros to make Psyche fall in love with a pig so
she'll roll around in the mud and no longer be quite
so beautiful. Eros, however, becomes very taken
with the girl. He is impressed by the way she
rejects her suitors, not because of their wealth or
fame, but because none are able to carry on a
conversation. Secretly Eros learns that Psyche is
both intelligent and curious; precisely what he is
looking for in a partner. Determined to marry her,
he makes her suitors fall in love with her sisters
and has Psyche carried off to live in his golden
palace. There Psyche has everything she could ever
want, but soon she learns her sisters are trying to
steal her fortune, and Aphrodite is meddling with
Eros' affairs. The love struck couple run amok in
the palace. Eros and Psyche must learn which is
more powerful, love or jealousy.
Jessica Puller of Highland Parkk IL.
graduated with departmental honors from the
Northwestern University Theatre Program. While
there, her play "The Book of Dave" was a finalist in
the Agnes Nixon Playwriting contest. In 2008, her
honors thesis, "Women Who Weave" won the unpublished
play reading contest with the American Alliance for
Theatre and Education and has subsequently been
published by Playscripts, Inc. In 2009, her play
"The Creator" took first place in the Marilyn Hall
Play Competition for Youth Theatre. She is
affiliated with several theatres in the suburbs of
Chicago, including Citadel Theatre and the Piccolo
Theatre. Her website is at
http://sites.google.com/site/jessicapullersportfolio/home
HONORABLE MENTION TO:
MONSTERS? LOST AND FOUND by Barbara Ashley
of Laguna Woods, CA
Comedy Suitable for Middle School (Grades 6- 8). |
