The Jerry Kaufman Awards were established in 2007 by Carol Goldberg to recognize excellence in writing for the theater and to support playwrights in the process of a new play’s development. The American Renaissance Theater nominates three full-length plays developed during the Company’s workshops, a winning play is chosen, and all three playwrights receive an honorarium to help further their creative endeavors in an annual awards ceremony held at The Dramatists Guild.
2010 Recipients
The Good Counselor by Kathryn Grant (Winner)
As a public defender attempts to mount a defense for a woman accused of killing her baby, the argument spills over from the courtroom into the community and finally into the psyche of the defense lawyer who must come to terms with his preconceptions about the capacities of mothers. www.kathryngrantplaywright.com
Zinzi by Phyllis MacBryde (Finalist)
Ripped from her tribal roots in South Africa and cast into the fertile jazz world of post World War II Harlem, a young girl struggles to find her way amid the challenges of a racially divided America. www.zinzithemusical.com
Quick Cuts, now titled The Eighth Wonder by Bill Cosgriff (Finalist)
A working–class family in upstate New York deals with divorce, poverty, adultery – and the trials of raising a developmentally-delayed child. A dramedy that moves from the hardscrabble world of lawn maintenance to the high precincts of the Parisian art world and back again.