Rella Lossy Playwright Award
The annual Rella Lossy Playwright Award honors one emerging playwright and their world premier play. One half of the $5,000 award half is given to the playwright and the second covers production costs of the play.
DONOR
Dr. Frank Lossy endowed this award in honor of his late wife, Rella Lossy (1934-1996), a lifelong lover and champion of the American theatre and playwriting. She published several plays, served as the Theatre Editor of the Bay Area Review, and was a founding member of the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. She was also an actress, published poet, and great supporter of the arts in Bay Area.
ELIGIBILITY
There is no application for this award. A group of nonprofit theatres is invited to nominate a play script by an emerging playwright from their upcoming season. Nominations are considered by an appointed juror, a distinguished playwright or director, who reviews the submissions devoid of the author and name of the nominating theater.
2012 AWARDEE
Christopher Chen, The Hundred Flowers Project
Before receiving the Rella Lossy Playwright Award, Chen created Into the Numbers, The Window Age and Aulis: An Act of Nihilism in One Long Act, among other works. His plays have been produced and developed at Central Works, Beijing Fringe Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Silk Road Theatre Project, Lark Play Development Center, hotINK Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, American Conservatory Theater, Magic Theatre, Bay One Acts/Instrumental Theatre, Cutting Ball Theater, Asian American Theater Company, as well as Crowded Fire Theater. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Chen holds an MFA in playwriting from San Francisco State University, and is the resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation.
2012 JUROR
Performance arts veteran, Mark Russell has been an active member of the theater community for several decades. Russell has been the Executive/Artistic Director at Performance Space 122, served as Guest Artistic Director at Portland’s Time Based Arts Festival, and was the Executive Director at the Harwich Junior Theatre in Massachusetts. He is currently the Artistic Director and Producer at Under The Radar Festival at The Public Theater in New York.
Learn more about our previous awardees, and for more information about the Art Awards Program at The San Francisco Foundation, please contact us at 415.733.8500 or email us.