Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting
Sponsored by the Laura Pels International Foundation

This award is offered to the best student-written play that celebrates diversity and encourages tolerance while exploring issues of dis-empowered voices not traditionally considered mainstream.

One of KCACTF's most distinguished alumna, Paula Vogel won the 1977 National Student Playwriting Award for her play Meg while a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Signature Theatre in New York is currently devoting a full season to he body of work. Her newest play, The Long Christmas Ride Home premiered at Trinity Repertory Theatre in the fall of 2003, and enjoyed a critically acclaimed run at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in Spring 2004. Her play How I Learned to Drive received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and has been produced around the world. Ms. Vogel's plays have been performed at theatres such as the Roundabout Theatre Company, the Lucille Lortel Theatre, the Union Square Theatre and Circle Repertory in New York, Arena Stage, the American Repertory Theatre, Perseverance Theatre, the Goodman, the Magic Theatre, Center Stage and Alley Theatre as well as throughout Canada, England, Brazil and Spain. The Baltimore Waltz won the Obie for Best Play in 1992 and her anthology, The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays, has been published by TCG. Other plays include The Mineola Twins, Hot and Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, and The Oldest Profession. Other awards include the AT&T New Plays Award, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, the Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center Fellowship, several National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the McKnight Fellowship. She is an Alumna of New Dramatists, and a recent inductee of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. She is currently developing screenplays of How I learned to Drive and The Oldest Profession.

First Place:
$2500 and the playwright will be awarded a fellowship to attend at New Play Development Laboratory.

Second Place:
$1000 and a grant of $250 to the producing department of the play for its support of the work.

Please refer to the rules and procedures of the Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards for more information on the process.

2005
Jasper Lake, John Kuntz of the Playwrights' Theatre of Boston University

2004
Yemaya's Belly, by Quiara Alegría Hudes, Brown University

2003
Edible Shoes, by Jonathan Yukich, Indiana University, produced by Wichita State University