The Jerry Kaufman Award
The Jerry Kaufman Award in Playwriting was established in 2007 by Carol Goldberg to honor her brother, playwright and publicist, Jerry Kaufman. This award honors American Renaissance Theater playwrights. It is awarded on the basis of excellence in writing a full-length work for the theater that has been developed and presented in the Company’s workshops. Funds that accompany the awards are to be used by the playwright to further his or her artistic endeavors. Mr. Kaufman loved the craft of playwriting and gave generously of his own talent and energies to the American Renaissance Theater Company. The Jerry Kaufman Award in Playwriting continues the important and selfless work that he pursued so passionately during his life and insures that his spirit will continue to inspire the works of future playwrights.
About Jerry Kaufman
Liz Perry and Jerry Kaufman in the Rotunda of the US Capital, June, 1996
Jerry Kaufman devoted his life to theater arts and the elevation of the dramatist. He is remembered for his indefatigable good humor and relentless energy in promoting theater artists. Having enjoyed a busy career in public relations, along with writing for radio and television, Mr. Kaufman joined the American Renaissance Theater Company as a playwright. A prolific writer, he developed a list of works and his plays were included in many competitions and festivals including the Virginia Beach Festival, the 63rd Street Performers, Riant Theater and the Dramatists Forum. In addition to publicizing other playwrights, he championed theater organizations such as the Henry Street Settlement and the work of important authors like Rachel Chenchinsky Roth whose holocaust memoir Here There is No Why found a strong audience thanks to his efforts. He went to great lengths to promote Sunflower, a play about the life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leading figure of the women’s suffrage movement, written by ARTC co-founder, Elizabeth Perry. Pursuing all channels to get the show off the ground, he contacted the Elizabeth Cady Stanton estate, the Johnstown Historical Society, and the National Museum of Women’s History, all publicity channels he had relationships with. He was endlessly diligent in making sure the play got seen and personally escorted Mrs. Stanton’s great great granddaughter, Coline Jenkens Sahlin, to a performance of the play at the New Dramatists. He then brought the museum founders to a production of Sunflower in New York. As a consequence, Ms. Perry was asked to deliver Stanton’s famous “Declaration” at the Dedication of the Suffrage Statue in the Rotunda of the US Capital.