Announcing 12 Semifinalists for the 2026 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship
The 12 semifinalists are BENJAMIN BENNE, KATE CORTESI, ALEXA DERMAN, RYAN DRAKE, JUCOBY JOHNSON, ADITYA JOSHI, CHAD KAYDO, ADIN LENAHAN, DHARI NOEL, ABIGAIL C. ONWUNALI, ANIKE SONUGA, and MALLORY JANE WEISS.
Now in its 23rd year, the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship is the company's most prestigious award, annually supporting a playwright who has yet to have an Off-Broadway premiere in New York City. Past recipients include Pulitzer Prize winners Sanaz Toossi and Quiara Alegría Hudes, Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee Heidi Schreck, and Obie winners Clare Barron and Kirsten Greenidge.
Each Fellow receives an honorarium of $20,000, and an additional $10,000 in development support from Page 73, which can be personalized to support the Fellow’s proposed projects 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 a new play, including identifying artistic collaborators like directors, designers, and actors.
The 2025 Playwriting Fellow is LORI FELIPE-BARKIN.
Benjamin Benne
BENJAMIN BENNE’s (beh-nay) plays include Alma (Center Theatre Group, American Blues, ArtsWest, Curious Theatre, Central Square, The Spot, Chance Theater, Passage Theatre), at the very bottom of a body of water (forthcoming: Boston Court Pasadena), In His Hands (Mosaic Theater, First Floor), Manning (Portland Stage), and What / Washed Ashore / Astray (Pillsbury House Theatre). Development: Williamstown Theatre Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Public, Roundabout, Playwrights Realm, The New Group, Denver Center, The Old Globe, Two River, The Lark, New Harmony Project, and SPACE on Ryder Farm, among many others. Awards: Dr. Kerry English Award, Clauder Competition Grand Prize, Blue Ink Playwriting Award, National Latinx Playwriting Award. Commissions: South Coast Rep & Seattle Rep. MFA: David Geffen/Yale School of Drama. He is newly based in Brooklyn, NY. benjaminbenne.com
Kate Cortesi
The plays of KATE CORTESI examine how American values (de)form individuals and communities, and seek the vanishing point where comedy and tragedy converge. Her work has been performed around the country and internationally, including in translation. Select full-length: Great Kills (Princess Grace Award, Kilroys List), A Patron of the Arts (Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project, In Scena! Festival, Rome), ONE MORE LESS (NYFA award, Relentless Finalist), Love (Sky Cooper New American Play Prize, Marin Theatre Company, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Kilroys List), Is Edward Snowden Single? (7 BroadwayWorld nominations including Best New Play; The Pool Plays, The Jungle Theatre, Second Thought Theatre, Single Carrot, among others), Ten Grand (Lincoln Center Reading Series, Pacific Playwrights Festival, L. Arnold Weissberger Award Finalist) and Daylight (The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Playwrights Horizons New Works Lab). Commissions: Playwrights Horizons, Keen Company, South Coast Rep, and the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Residencies/Fellowships: New Dramatists, The O’Neill, The Huntington, Colt Coeur, New Georges Affiliated Artist. More at katecortesi.com
Alexa Derman
ALEXA DERMAN is a Brooklyn-based playwright and screenwriter. Her plays have been developed by the Playwrights Realm, Ars Nova, NYTW, the O'Neill, Clubbed Thumb, Orchard Project, the cell, and the Playwrights Center. Alexa’s plays have been the winner of the Kernodle Prize, the Chesley/Bumbalo Prize, and the Jewish Plays Project’s National Competition; runner-up for Princess Grace/New Dramatists; two-time honorable mention for the Relentless Award. She’s under commission from MTC/Sloan and EST/Sloan and is a New Georges affiliated artist. As a screenwriter, she has been a staff writer for Netflix and Hulu and is developing multiple film/TV projects. BA from Yale in Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies; MFA from Brown, where she studied under Julia Jarcho. Now that you've met her, you can call her Lex. alexaderman.com
Ryan Drake
RYAN DRAKE is a queer playwright and educator in Brooklyn, NY. His play you don't have to do anything had an acclaimed sold-out run at HERE Arts Center presented by Pulitzer Prize Finalist Will Arbery. His work has been supported at New York Theater Workshop, IRT Theater, Mercury Store, The Brick Aux, The Tank, The Flea, and The Wild Project. He's been an Artist-in-Residence at New York Theater Workshop’s Dartmouth Residency, a two-time PWC Core Apprentice Finalist and a 2022 Page 73 and Princess Grace Semifinalist. His short films have been screened at Newfest and Bushwick Film Festival. He won the Rita & Burton Goldberg Playwriting Prize and the James E. Michael Playwriting Prize. He's been an Adjunct Lecturer at Hunter College. BA: Kenyon College, MFA: Hunter College, Playwriting. ryandrake.squarespace.com
JuCoby Johnson
JUCOBY JOHNSON (he/him) is a New York-based playwright, actor, and screenwriter originally from Jacksonville, FL. JuCoby is a second-year playwright in the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. As an actor, he has been seen onstage at The Guthrie Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Jungle Theater, Theater Latté Da, Theater Mu, Ten Thousand Things Theatre Company, and many more. As a playwright, his plays include How It's Gon Be (Echo Theater, 2023; Underdog Theater, 2019), ...but you could've held my hand (upcoming: IAMA Theater, 2026; CATCO, 2022; O'Neill NPC Summer Season, 2022), 5 (Jungle Theater, 2023; O'Neill NPC Summer Season, 2022; Seven Devils Finalist), Heritage (International Black Theater Festival, 2024); The Red Man (2025 Ojai Playwrights Conference, 2025 Pacific Playwrights Festival, 2025 O'Neill NPC Finalist, 2025 Seven Devils Finalist); I'll Be Seeing You Again (Jungle Serial Audio Series, 2021) and Revelations (Playing On Air, 2021). His screenwriting credits include The Runarounds (Amazon). He is the recipient of McKnight and Jerome Hill Artist Fellowships, was a member of the 2022 Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Program, and a member of the inaugural Artist Cohort at The Jungle Theater in Minneapolis. jucobyjohnson.com
Aditya Joshi
ADITYA JOSHI is a theatre artist and filmmaker from Kansas City, Missouri. On stage, Aditya produced an Off-Broadway production of the Siglo De Oro classic La Traición en la Amistad, which premiered in June of 2023 at Repertorio Español in New York City. As a playwright, Aditya has received development support from The Sol Project and Latinx Playwrights Circle (among others), and was a finalist for Jane Chambers Feminist Playwriting Award & semifinalist for the Princess Grace Award. In TV and film, Aditya is currently a story editor on the second season of the hit TV series We Were Liars, from Amazon & UTV, returning after writing episode 105. He also sold Shikaar, a limited series about a doomed tiger hunt, to FX and co-directed Finding Our Wild, a short in partnership with REI Co-Op Studios that received a theatrical release with AMC Theatres. His new short film as a director, A West Side Story Story, premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and is executive produced by Luis Guzmán. He was recently selected as a 2025 WGA/Filmmation New York Screenwriting Fellow, where he is developing his feature directorial debut under the guidance of Tom McCarthy and Anne Carey. adityamov.com
Chad Kaydo
CHAD KAYDO is a queer playwright from Ashtabula, Ohio, who writes intimately observed plays obsessed with friendship, mortality, and the existential questions hidden in the quotidian. Recently: I’m Repeating Myself at the Brick directed by Carsen Joenk (with the Omnivores and RHONDA), Clubbed Thumb 2024-2025 Early Career Writers’ Group, 2025 Great Plains Theatre Commons. Upcoming: Developing Where is Miss Stone? with Clubbed Thumb. Chad’s work has also been supported by Fresh Ground Pepper, HB Studio, Playhouse on Park, the Quickening Room, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Theater Masters. As Playwright in Residence at the Brick, Chad produces and hosts Quick + Dirty, a development series for short works by new collaborators. One-fifth of the theater collective The Omnivores. M.F.A., Hunter College. chadkaydo.com
Adin Lenahan
ADIN LENAHAN (they/them) is a writer, performer, and receptionist. Their work has been seen at Abrons Art Center, Ars Nova, The Brick, Dixon Place, Culture Lab LIC, Judson Memorial Church, The Kraine, The New Ohio, The Tank, Theater for the New City, Tom Noonan’s Paradise Factory, wild project, diners, drive-ins, and dives. Finalist: Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship, Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship. Semifinalist: Terrence McNally New Works Incubator, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Playwrights’ Center’s Jerome Fellowship, The Frank Moffett Mosier Fellowship, The Jewish Plays Project.
Dhari Noel
DHARI NOEL (he/they) is a Queer-Black-Caribbean-Harlemite playwright, performer, and educator. Dhari’s writing often explores the incoherence of race, the failures of gender, and inherited ways of being. Dhari’s work has been generously supported by several artistic organizations, including: Black Ram//White Ewe (Dramatic Question Theater' Classics in Color), Is Cry You Cry’n? (Brown University & Clubbed Thumb); Money Shot (Brown University, 2025 O’Neill NPC Finalist); Penguin Sex With Mr. Morgan (ANTfest @ Ars Nova, Brown University); A.G.P. (2023 Bushwick Starr Reading Series Finalist); Man Made (2024 O’Neill NPC Semi-Finalist), and Spirit Junkie (Cherry Picking/The Wild Project). In the summer of 2023, Dhari was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee Writers Conference and an Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellow at Lambda Literary’s writing retreat. Dhari received a BA in Sociology from Columbia University and completed an MFA in Playwriting at Brown University in May of 2025 supported by an Adele Kellenberg Seaver 1949 Fellowship in Creative Writing. Website: dharinoel.com
Abigail C. Onwunali
ABIGAIL C. ONWUNALI (she/her) is a multi-faceted Nigerian-American storyteller whose work spans playwriting, performance, and poetry. She is a 2025 NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellow, 2025 New Harmony Project Resident, and recipient of the 2025 Irons in the Fire Residency. A Princess Grace Award winner and Red Bull Theater Short New Play Festival winner, Abigail is a current member of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Obie-winning Youngblood collective and an alumna of the Liberation Theater Company’s Residency Program. She has been a finalist for the Fire This Time Festival and Rattlestick’s Terrence McNally New Work Incubator, as well as a semi-finalist for La MaMa’s Experiments in Playwriting Fellowship, Ars Nova’s Artist-in-Residence, Forge NYC, and the Colt Coeur Residency. As a performer, Abigail is a two-time Elliot Norton Award nominee and winner for her lead performance in The Grove at The Huntington. Her poetry has been viewed worldwide, and she holds a degree in Acting from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. An inaugural member of Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Mentorship Program, Abigail creates ritual-driven work that conjures the unseen, giving voice to her ancestral roots and illuminating the inner lives of Black women through ceremony and story.
Anike Sonuga
Born in the Bay, brought up in Baltimore, now based in Brooklyn, ANIKE SONUGA is a writer, actor, director, and anything else she ends up doing. A graduate from NYU Tisch’s Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, she is no stranger to multi-disciplinary work. Her work blends film and theatre, exploring intimate relationships between everyone from Mormons, to strippers, to teenage boys, to God. Anike was a member of Clubbed Thumb's 2024/25 Early-Career Writers Group. She was also a finalist for the Exponential Festival's 2026 fellowship. Her writing has been featured at Playwrights Downtown, The Tank, The Brick's Exponential Festival, the inaugural RE/VENUE Festival at the Paradise Factory, and Harlot's Plays to Watch Out For at Jack. (and by the way, it’s pronounced uh-nee-kay sho-noo-gah) anikes.com
Mallory Jane Weiss
MALLORY JANE WEISS is a Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based, queer, female playwright with a penchant for comedy and Taylor Ham. Her work has been developed at The O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Clubbed Thumb, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Portland Stage Company, Parity Productions, and The Invulnerable Nothings, among others. Mallory was a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. She has been named a finalist for the Princess Grace Award and Clubbed Thumb's Biennial Commission; semi-finalist for Page 73's Playwriting Fellowship, Premiere Stages' Premiere Play Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Terrence McNally New Works Incubator; and a nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her audio play, Dave and Julia are Stuck in a Tree, was the winner of the 2020 James Stevenson Prize and produced by Playing on Air starring Danny DeVito. Her play, Pony Up, is published with Broadway Play Publishing; and her short play, DRAWBRIDGE, is published with Concord Theatricals. BA: Harvard University; MFA: The New School. malloryjaneweiss.com
