Announcing 12 Semifinalists for 2020 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship

Selected from more than 400 applicants, the largest application pool to date, the twelve semifinalists are Bleu Beckford-Burrell, Serena Berman, Sarah Bernstein, Marisa Carr, Vichet Chum, Emma Goidel, Marvin González De León, Morgan Gould, Amina Henry, Stefani Kuo, Sofya Levitsky-Weitz, and juliany taveras.

The finalists and the Fellowship recipient will be announced in January 2020. Page 73 will also announce members for the 2020 Interstate 73 Writers Group in January. 

Now in its 17th year, the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship is the company's most prestigious award, annually supporting a playwright who has yet to have a professional premiere in New York City. Past recipients include Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes, Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee Heidi Schreck, and Obie winners Clare Barron and Kirsten Greenidge. The 2019 Playwriting Fellow is Sanaz Toossi. Each Fellow receives an honorarium of $10,000, and an additional $10,000 in development support from Page 73, which can be personalized to support the Fellow’s proposed project and can include such expenses as research, workshop and reading presentations, and fees for collaborating artists. Each Fellow works with Page 73 on at least one public presentation of the new play, including identifying artistic collaborators like directors, designers, and actors. 

Bleu Beckford-Burrell

Bleu Beckford-Burrell is a first-generation Jamaican-American actor/playwright. Born and raised in New York city, she’s works for non-profit organizations where she teaches acting to teens, as well as write and direct plays. She is the 2018 Yale Drama Series Award Runner Up, The Playwrights Realm 2018-19 Fellow. Her plays include P.S.365 —2019 O’Neill Finalist, showcased in EST workshop series and The National Black Theatre —Keep the Soul Alive reading series. Lyons Pride –-Ink’d Festival of New Plays, EST Bloodwork Reading Series, Finalist for: 2018 PWC New Voices Fellowship, 2018 BAPF, 2018 Princess Grace Award; 2020 Arnold Weissberger Award Nominee, 2019 Honorable Mention for The Kilroys, and longlisted 2018 Theatre503 Award. M.F.A. Rutgers University. BleuBeckford.com

Serena Berman

Serena Berman is a playwright, actress, and producer in NYC. Her work has been developed with Ars Nova (Play Group 2019-2020), Westport Country Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival, The Renegade Theater Festival, Less Than Rent, and Artilliers Theatre Company. She is currently Director of Performance at LES gallery Chinatown Soup, where she produces theatre and organizes political activism events. BFA: NYU Tisch. www.serenaberman.com

Sarah Bernstein

Sarah Bernstein received her MFA from Hunter College, studying under Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Her plays have been developed with The New Group, The Lark, and Project Y, and produced by Forward Flux, The Motor Company, and the New Voices Project. She earned a BA from Brown University, studying with Paula Vogel. Sarah teaches undergraduate playwriting at Hunter and tutors young writers around the world. Her humor writing is published in Reductress and The New Yorker.

Marisa Carr

Marisa Carr is playwright who recently transplanted to Chicago from Minneapolis. Selected recent honors: Scratchpad at the Playwrights' Realm (2019-2020), BAPF Finalist (2019), McKnight Playwriting Fellowship Finalist (2019), Jerome Artist Fellowship Finalist (2019), Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep (2018), Forward Flux Three New American Plays Commission (2018), Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellowship (2016-17). Her work has been presented by theaters including: The Guthrie, Pillsbury House + Theater, the Playwrights’ Center, and others. She is Turtle Mountain Ojibwe.

Vichet Chum

Vichet Chum is a Cambodian-American playwright and theater maker, originally from Dallas, Texas and now living in New York City. His plays have been workshopped at Steppenwolf Theatre, Fault Line Theatre, Crowded Outlet, Second Generation Productions, Crowded Outlet, Weston Playhouse, Cleveland Public Theatre, All For One Theater, Amios, Florida State University, Merrimack Repertory Theatre and the New Harmony Project. He received the 2018-19 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting. He serves as an Associate Artist at Merrimack Repertory Theatre and a board member for the New Harmony Project. This season, Vichet is a part of the Resident Working Farm Group at Space on Ryder Farm and has recently received a commission from the Audible Theater Emerging Playwrights Fund. He is a proud graduate of the University of Evansville (BFA) and Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company (MFA). He’s represented by Beth Blickers at APA Agency. vichetchum.com

Emma Goidel

Emma Goidel’s plays include The Gap (Barrymore Award, Kilroys List 2019), A Knee That Can Bend (Nominee, ATCA/Steinberg Award & Lanford Wilson Award), Local Girls (Finalist, Princess Grace Award), and We Can All Agree To Pretend This Never Happened (EST, Òran Mór, Tiny Dynamite/InterAct). Her work has been presented by Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, InterAct, LAByrinth, Playwrights Realm, Playwrights’ Center, NYSAF, and PlayPenn’s the Foundry. She is a co-founder of Orbiter 3, and a Kilroy.

Marvin González De León

Marvin González De León is a Chicano playwright whose work has been produced and developed at Good Luck, Macbeth Theatre, Reno Little Theater, Teatro Bravo, Arizona State University, Pillsbury House + Theater, Teatro del Pueblo, and the Playwrights’ Center. He was a 2018-19 Many Voices Fellow and is currently a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. He teaches at Arizona State University, where he received his MFA in Dramatic writing in 2017. marvingonzalezdeleon.com

Morgan Gould

Morgan Gould is a writer/director whose plays include All the Stupid Bitches, Three Fat Sisters, and Nicole Clark Is Having a Baby. Her play I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart premiered at Studio Theatre in DC and received a Helen Hayes Award Nomination. Morgan is a recent graduate of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship, a member of New Dramatists, EST, and a Yaddo and MacDowell Colony Fellow. As a director she has directed productions at P73, EST, Humana, Marin Theatre Company, Primary Stages, the Hangar, HERE Arts Center, and Ars Nova, among others. She is the artistic director of Morgan Gould & Friends, her own company with 13 other actors/ designers/ producers.

Amina Henry

Amina Henry is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Productions include: The Johnsons, Hunter John and Jane, Ducklings and The Animals at JACK, New Light Theater's The Great Novel at The Flea, Bully at Interrobang Theater, SUNY Purchase and Clubbed Thumb's 2019 WinterWorks Festival, and HERO Theater's Troy (Los Angeles, CA). Her work has been developed and/or produced by: The New Group, Project Y Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Kitchen Dog Theater, among others. She is a New Georges Affiliate Artist.

Stefani Kuo (郭佳怡)

Stefani Kuo is a native of Hong Kong and received her B.A. from Yale. She is a playwright, poet, and performer. Her play, Architecture of Rain, premiered at the Iseman Theatre at Yale and received a reading in the DVRF Roundtable and Checkmark Theatre Company series. She is currently a member of writers groups Interstate 73 with Page 73 and Speakers Corner with Gingold Theatrical Group. She is a 2020 finalist for the Jerome fellowship at Lanesboro Arts Centre, 2019 finalist for the National Playwrights Conference, NAP Series, semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship, and 2018 finalist for the Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights Centre, the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, the DVRF Playwrights' Program, and semi-finalist for SPACE on Ryder Farm, and the Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep. She has been commissioned to write a play for the Rubin Museum's Spiral Magazine. Her play delicacy of a puffin heart was recently produced as part of the 2018 Corkscrew Theatre Festival and The Parsnip Ship. www.stefanikuo.com

Sofya Levitsky-Weitz

Sofya Levitsky-Weitz is a current Core Writer and a 2018/2019 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, where her play, Cannabis Passover, will be developed for their public season. Her play, this party sucks, is on the 2019 Kilroys List and she has developed work in New York, Chicago, and LA. Semi/Finalist for the O’Neill, Ingram New Works Lab, Playwrights’ Realm, the Heideman Award, Princess Grace, and Premiere Stages. She got her MFA in Writing for the Screen & Stage at Northwestern University and is a member of EST/Youngblood. www.sofyaweitz.com

juliany taveras

juliany taveras is a dominican-american writer, theatre-maker, & arts educator from Brooklyn, NY. their playwriting has been nationally recognized (Kilroys List 2016, 50 Playwrights Project List 2018) & developed/staged with Page 73, The Lark, Crashbox Theater Company, Corkscrew Theater Festival, The Bechdel Group, WOW Café Theatre, & Greenhouse Theater Center, among others. their poetry & photography have also been included in various digital & print publications. juliany is a graduate of Vassar College & the St. Joseph’s College Writer’s Foundry, & currently works as an absurdly enthusiastic teaching artist with youth in NYC while continuing to develop work that navigates bodies in diaspora. julianytaveras.com