Ready, set, fry! It’s time for the annual "Hot Wang Festival" in Memphis, Tennessee, and Cordell Crutchfield knows he has the wings that’ll make him king. Supported by his beau Dwayne and their culinary clique, The New Wing Order, Cordell is marinating and firing up his frying pan in a bid to reclaim the crispy crown. When Dwayne takes in his troubled nephew however, it becomes a recipe for disaster. Suddenly, a first place trophy isn’t the only thing Cordell risks losing. Steve H. Broadnax III will direct this sizzling world premiere from Residency 5 playwright Katori Hall (Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho).
For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000).
The Hot Wing King, by Katori Hall
A funny, deeply felt consideration of Black masculinity and how it is perceived, filtered through the experiences of a loving gay couple and their extended family as they prepare for a culinary competition.
Winning Work
The Hot Wing King
Biography
Olivier Award-winning and two-time Tony-nominated Memphis-native Katori Hall is the bookwriter and co-producer of the West End and Broadway hit, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. She’s also the executive producer and showrunner of P-VALLEY, the breakout Starz drama based on her play Pussy Valley.
Katori’s latest piece, The Hot Wing King, premiered in Spring 2020 at the Signature Theatre, rounding out her three-play residency. She is, perhaps, best known for The Mountaintop. The play, which fictionalizes the last night in Martin Luther King’s life, won the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2010 before opening on Broadway in October 2011 to critical acclaim. Katori’s other works include the award-winning Hurt Village, Hoodoo Love, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, Our Lady of Kibeho, and The Blood Quilt. She is also the director of the award-winning short, ARKABUTLA.
Katori is an alumna of Columbia University, ART at Harvard University, and Juilliard. She’s also a graduate of the Sundance Episodic Lab's inaugural class, the Sundance Screenwriting Lab, and Ryan Murphy’s Half Foundation Directing Program. Katori has been published in publications such as The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and The New York Times. She is a proud member of the Ron Brown Scholar Program and the Coca-Cola Scholar Program.
In addition to her Laurence Olivier Award, Katori’s other awards include a Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA Fellowship, the Columbia University John Jay Award for Distinguished Professional Achievement, National Black Theatre's August Wilson Playwriting Award, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award.
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2021:
Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley
A contemporary satire featuring outrageous situations and language repurposed from the internet to skewer online culture and question what identities we have permission to claim.
Zora Howard
An intimate, tightly constructed drama about three generations of Black women over the course of one day, and the violence they are forced to live with, absorb and attempt to overcome.
The Jury
The Jury
Wendy Goldberg(Chair)
Artistic Director, National Playwrights Conference, Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, New York City
Quiara Alegría Hudes*
Playwright, New York City
Naveen Kumar
Journalist/Culture Critic, New York City
Peter Marks
Theater Critic, The Washington Post
Janice Simpson
Director, Arts and Culture Reporting, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York
Winners in Drama
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.
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.
2021 Prize Winners
Robert Greene of the Los Angeles Times
For editorials on policing, bail reform, prisons and mental health that clearly and holistically examined the Los Angeles criminal justice system.
Wesley Morris of The New York Times
For unrelentingly relevant and deeply engaged criticism on the intersection of race and culture in America, written in a singular style, alternately playful and profound.
Michael Paul Williams of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch
For penetrating and historically insightful columns that guided Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy, through the painful and complicated process of dismantling the city's monuments to white supremacy.
Nadja Drost, freelance contributor, The California Sunday Magazine
For a brave and gripping account of global migration that documents a group’s journey on foot through the Darién Gap, one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world.