Stacey Rose has been named the inaugural winner of the Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award, a new national play contest at Barrington Stage Company. Rose will be awarded $25,000, and her play America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro will receive a world-premiere production at the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, venue.
“There are few words for how honored I am,” said Rose in a statement. “Having the play produced as well meets and exceeds my wildest dreams for the world premiere of this play.”
Second-place winners Brent Askari (for American Underground) and Christina Quintana (for Citizen Scientist) will each receive $5,000 and a developmental staged reading.
Set in the not-too-distant future, America v. 2.1, according to Barrington, is a “day in the life of a troupe of Black actors who are charged with re-enacting the revised history of the once-thriving American Negro. It quickly becomes a day of reckoning as the troupe is forced to face the parallels their own lives draw to the lives of the very Negroes whose stories they are compelled to tell.”
“I want to thank Bonnie and Terry Burman for recognizing the importance of discovering and supporting vital new voices in the American Theatre,” said Artistic Director Julianne Boyd. “Barrington Stage is thrilled to bring to life this summer Stacey Rose’s play, America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro, a provocative, uncompromising look at Black Americans in post-apocalyptic America, and both Brent Askari and Christina Quintana share Stacey’s sense of urgency in telling stories that need to be heard now.”
