In July 2008, while Lin-Manuel was on vacation in Mexico, Lin-Manuel took on a little light reading in the form of Ron Chernow’s 800-page New York Times best-selling biography, Alexander Hamilton, chronicling the life of the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Lin-Manuel was captivated by the story of Hamilton’s life and how the very human struggles of the American Revolution continue to manifest themselves in today's society. - from linmanuel.com
For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda
A landmark American musical about the gifted and self-destructive founding father whose story becomes both contemporary and irresistible.
Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger (left) presents the 2016 Drama Prize to Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Winning Work
Hamilton
Biography
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Book, Music, and Lyrics/Alexander Hamilton) Broadway: Composer-Lyricist-Usnavi of In The Heights (4 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Score, Grammy Award, Pulitzer Prize Finalist), Bring It On: The Musical (Co-Composer/Co-Lyricist, Tony Nomination for Best Musical) West Side Story (2009 Revival, Spanish Translations). Off-Broadway: Hamilton (10 Lortel Awards, 3 Outer Critic Circle Awards, 8 Drama Desk Awards, 2015 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Musical and the 2015 OBIE Award for Best New American Play), Merrily We Roll Along, tick, tick… BOOM! (both City Center Encores!) Lin-Manuel received an Emmy Award with Tom Kitt for “Bigger” from the 67th Annual Tony Awards. TV/Film: “Freestyle Love Supreme,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Smash,” “Do No Harm,” “Modern Family,” “House,” “The Electric Company,” “Sesame Street,” “The Sopranos,” The Odd Life of Timothy Green, and 200 Cartas. Proud Council Member of The Dramatists Guild. www.linmanuel.com
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Drama in 2016:
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
A play of wit and irony that deftly transports the audience from satire to thriller and back again.
Stephen Karam
A profoundly affecting drama that sketches the psychological and emotional contours of an average American family.
The Jury
The Jury
Peter Marks(Chair)
drama critic
Ayad Akhtar*
playwright
Stephanie Arnold
author, professor emerita of theatre
Anne Marie Welsh
theater critic, script editor
Linda Winer
drama critic
Winners in Drama
Stephen Adly Guirgis
A nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death.
Annie Baker
A thoughtful drama with well-crafted characters that focuses on three employees of a Massachusetts art-house movie theater, rendering lives rarely seen on the stage.
Ayad Akhtar
A moving play that depicts a successful corporate lawyer painfully forced to consider why he has for so long camouflaged his Pakistani Muslim heritage.
Quiara Alegría Hudes
An imaginative play about the search for meaning by a returning Iraq war veteran working in a sandwich shop in his hometown of Philadelphia.
2016 Prize Winners
William Finnegan
A finely crafted memoir of a youthful obsession that has propelled the author through a distinguished writing career.
T.J. Stiles
A rich and surprising new telling of the journey of the iconic American soldier whose death turns out not to have been the main point of his life. (Moved by the Board from the Biography category.)
Peter Balakian
Poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that undergird a global age of danger and uncertainty.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
A layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a "man of two minds" -- and two countries, Vietnam and the United States.