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Rajiv Joseph’s The North Pool, which premiered at TheatreWorks in San Jose in 2011, has won the Will Glickman Award, which honors the playwright of the best play to have its world premiere in the Bay Area in a year. The award comes with a $4,000 cash prize.
Rajiv Joseph’s The North Pool Wins Glickman Award
for Best New Play to Premiere in the Bay Area in 2011
Award to be presented at 35 Years, 35 Faces celebration on April 30, 2012 at Z Space in San Francisco
January 20, 2012 (San Francisco): Playwright Rajiv Joseph has won the prestigious Will Glickman Award for The North Pool, which received its world premiere with TheatreWorks in March 2011. Joseph and TheatreWorks will receive awards as part of Theatre Bay Area’s 35th Anniversary “35 Years, 35 Faces” event on April 30, 2012 at Z Space in San Francisco. In addition, Joseph will receive the award’s $4,000 purse.
In this cat-and-mouse psychological drama, a Middle Eastern high school student is called into the office by his vice principal, who’s anything but forthcoming about his reasons for detaining the Syrian-born student after school. What looks at first like a simple case of ethnic profiling gradually reveals itself to be something else altogether, something much deeper and more surprising.
“I am deeply honored to be chosen for this award, especially considering the wealth of new plays produced in the Bay Area,” Joseph says. “I am especially grateful for TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, whose New Works Initiative played an enormous role in the development of The North Pool.”
“The entire TheatreWorks company is thrilled with this award for a truly brilliant new play,” says company artistic director Robert Kelley. “The North Pool electrified our audiences and introduced all of us to Rajiv Joseph, one of the most exciting and invigorating young playwrights in the American theatre. And he’s a great guy, too!”
This is the second Glickman Award for TheatreWorks, which won the prize in 2001 for Bill Russell and Henry Krieger’s musical Everything’s Ducky.
“We’re so pleased to present this prestigious award to Rajiv Joseph and TheatreWorks this year,” says Theatre Bay Area executive director Brad Erickson. “Since 1984, the Will Glickman Award has celebrated some of the best theatre the San Francisco Bay Area has to offer and we’re pleased that the critics panel selected Rajiv Joseph and The North Pool as the next representatives to add to that list.”
Administered by Theatre Bay Area and started in 1984 to honor Bay Area playwright and screenwriter Will Glickman, the Will Glickman Award is presented annually to the author or authors of the best play to have its world premiere in the Bay Area. The winner is chosen by a panel of top Bay Area theatre critics: Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle, Robert Avila of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Karen D’Souza of the San Jose Mercury News, Chad Jones of TheaterDogs.net and Sam Hurwitt of the Marin Independent Journal.
The panel noted that there were several strong contenders debuting in 2011. Runners-up included God’s Plot by Mark Jackson (Shotgun Players); Fly by Night by Kim Rosenstock, Will Connolly and Michael Mitnick (TheatreWorks); and Phaedra by Adam Bock (Shotgun).
Last year’s winner, Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus el Rey, went on to celebrated productions in Los Angeles and Washington, DC. Other past recipients include Tony Kushner for Angels in America: Millennium Approaches (1992), Philip Kan Gotanda for Yankee Dawg You Die (1989), Octavio Solis for Santos y Santos (1994) and Leigh Fondakowski et al for The People’s Temple (2006).
Tickets will be available shortly for the “35 Years, 35 Faces” event, which, in addition to celebrating the Glickman awardees will also spotlight 33 other artists, companies, patrons and notables who have touched or been touched by Theatre Bay Area and its programs and services. Visit www.theatrebayarea.org/35faces for more information starting February 1.
About the Artist
Playwright Rajiv Joseph is best known for his celebrated hit Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo for which he was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and received an Outstanding New American Play Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Bengal Tiger made its Broadway debut starring Robin Williams in March 2011, at the same time that The North Pool premiered at TheatreWorks. Joseph’s other New York productions include Gruesome Playground Injuries, All This Intimacy and Animals Out of Paper (all at Second Stage Theatre); The Leopard and the Fox (Alter Ego); and Huck & Holden (Cherry Lane Theatre). His play The Monster At The Door (Alley Theatre) premiered last spring in Houston. Joseph’s Animals Out of Paper had its Bay Area premiere at SF Playhouse in 2010. The North Pool was workshopped as part of TheatreWorks’ 2009 New Works Festival. Joseph received his BA in Creative Writing from Miami University and his MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He served for three years in the Peace Corps in Senegal.
About the Company
Since its founding in 1970, TheatreWorks has become one of the nation’s leaders in cultivating and producing new musicals and plays, developing and premiering nearly 60 works by new and veteran artists. TheatreWorks is an Equity/LORT theatre, producing eight shows annually, playing to more than 100,000 patrons a year. The company’s New Works Festival and Writers Retreat programs attract authors and composers of national stature (Paul Gordon, Marsha Norman, Henry Krieger, Stephen Schwartz, Duncan Sheik, Joe DiPietro and Andrew Lippa, among many others), providing an artistic home in which America’s theatre artists can create new works. In addition, the company has developed scores of works which have gone on to both regional and Off-Broadway productions.
About the Glickman Award
Created to honor playwright and screen writer Will Glickman, the Will Glickman Award is presented annually to the author of the best play to have its world premiere in the Bay Area. The winner is chosen by a panel of top Bay Area theatre critics. The goal of the fund is to encourage new plays and their production as invaluable investments in American theatre. In 2004, Theatre Bay Area, the nation’s largest regional theatre service organization, took over administration of the award. This is the 28th award.
For more info about Theatre Bay Area, please visit www.theatrebayarea.org
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