It’s nearing midnight in Wyoming, where four young conservatives have gathered at a backyard after-party. They’ve returned home to toast their mentor Gina, newly inducted as president of a tiny Catholic college. But as their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and clashing generational politics, it becomes less a celebration than a vicious fight to be understood. On a chilly night in the middle of America, Will Arbery’s haunting play offers grace and disarming clarity, speaking to the heart of a country at war with itself.
Finalist: Heroes of the Fourth Turning, by Will Arbery
A scrupulously hewn drama centering on four alumni of a conservative Catholic college who confront themselves and each other, clashing over theology, politics and personal responsibility.
Nominated Work
Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Biography
Will Arbery is a playwright from Texas + Wyoming + seven sisters. His plays include Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Playwrights Horizons), Plano (Clubbed Thumb), Evanston Salt Costs Climbing (New Neighborhood), Wheelchair (3 Hole Press). He’s currently under commission from Playwrights Horizons and Shadowcatcher Entertainment. He’s a member of New Dramatists, The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Page 73’s Interstate 73, Colt Coeur, Youngblood, and an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers Group. His plays have been developed at Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Horizons, NYTW, The Vineyard, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Cape Cod Theater Project, The New Group, EST/Youngblood, The Bushwick Starr, Alliance/Kendeda, and Tofte Lake Center. Dance work: Pioneer Works, MCA Chicago, Watermill Center. MFA: Northwestern. BA: Kenyon College. willarbery.com
Winners
Prize Winner in Drama in 2020:
Michael R. Jackson
A metafictional musical that tracks the creative process of an artist transforming issues of identity, race, and sexuality that once pushed him to the margins of the cultural mainstream into a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities.
Drama
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2020:
David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori
A multi-layered and mischievous musical that deconstructs a beloved, original American art form to examine the promise and the limits of representation in both the theatrical and political senses of the word.
The Jury
The Jury
Wendy Goldberg(Chair)
Artistic Director
Naveen Kumar
Writer/Editor, New York City
Dominic Papatola
Theater Critic, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Janice Simpson
Director, Arts and Culture Reporting, CUNY Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism
Alisa Solomon
Professor of Journalism and Director in Arts Concentration, MA Program in Journalism, Columbia University
Winners in Drama
Jackie Sibblies Drury
A hard-hitting drama that examines race in a highly conceptual, layered structure, ultimately bringing audiences into the actors’ community to face deep-seated prejudices.
Martyna Majok
An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.
Lynn Nottage
For a nuanced yet powerful drama that reminds audiences of the stacked deck still facing workers searching for the American dream.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
A landmark American musical about the gifted and self-destructive founding father whose story becomes both contemporary and irresistible.
2020 Prize Winners
Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times
For a sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times
For work demonstrating extraordinary community service by a critic, applying his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.
Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx.) Herald-Press
For editorials that exposed how pre-trial inmates died horrific deaths in a small Texas county jail—reflecting a rising trend across the state—and courageously took on the local sheriff and judicial establishment, which tried to cover up these needless tragedies.
Staff of The Washington Post
For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.