One of GMTWP's alums, Michael R. Jackson (Cycle 14) was one of the winners of this year's Whiting Awards. This is the first time the award has been given to a musical theatre writer. Jackson won the prize for his submission from his new musical A STRANGE LOOP, which will be produced at Playwrights Horizons in New York City this spring.
The selection committee described Michael as:
Deftly attuned to pop culture and to the language of the twenty-first century, Michael R. Jackson fashions his plays phrase by phrase, layering irony, humor, pastiche, cultural references, and deep feeling. In a Joycean stream of consciousness, we explore a character buried under the weight of societal projections. The new linguistic pleasures in his work reflect and refract our oldest concerns as human beings: how do we make visible who we are to ourselves and to others? His kinetic plays fairly buzz with energy, his characters self-aware and blithely out of it all at once. This work is robustly intelligent, unflinchingly honest, dizzyingly screwball, and a sheer delight.
Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. The awards, of $50,000 each, are based on early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come.
To learn more about Jackson's upcoming production of A STRANGE LOOP at Playwrights Horizons, CLICK HERE.