2024 Goldberg Play Prize Winner and Finalists Announced!

We are thrilled to announce the winners and finalists for the 2024 Goldberg Playwriting Award.

The winner is French Boy Cigarettes by Forest Malley (MFA '23).

This year's award was juried by the Goldberg Award Committee of Oskar Eustis, Migdalia Cruz, Chisa Hutchinson, Jiehae Park, and Joseph Vinciguerra. 

The finalists are Somebody In Bumf_ck Montana Loves Me by Sydney Kurland (BFA '23), Hockey Wives by Tanya O'Debra (MFA '23), Grandma by Isabella Pipitone (BFA '23), and Domino by Malikah Marie Stafford (MFA '24).

A reading of French Boy Cigarettes will be organized in the Fall semester, so stay tuned for more information.

Please join us in congratulating these tremendous writers.
 

Forest Malley (not O’Malley– Malley is a fake last name and he’s a bit less Irish than that) is a Brooklyn-based playwright and performer from a notoriously witchy suburb of Massachusetts. His work explores memory, migration, queerness, divas, and his Arab-American heritage. He was one of seven winners of the 2022 Theater Masters Take Ten Festival, a finalist for the 2024 Page 73 Writing Fellowship, and a finalist for the 2023 O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference for his play Gidou. He is currently a member of the Page 73 Writer's Group and a Planet Fitness in Bushwick. M.F.A: NYU Tisch School of the Arts ‘23; B.A: Harvard University ‘20.

French Boy Cigarettes - A kidnapping-gone-awry leaves two Egyptian-American immigrants with a teenaged boy in their basement-- and the threat of deportation, incarceration, and God’s judgement looming over their heads. 

Sydney Kurland (she/they) is an NYC-based writer and performer. Her recent writing credits include: Somebody In Bumf*ck, Montana Loves Me (Workshop: NYU Tisch; Presentations of excerpts: Purple Light Productions, EPIC Players), In The Time It Took To Complete A Half-Assed Attempt At A Calc Worksheet (Production: Broke People Play Festival; Current Finalist for Spectrum Theatre Ensemble's 2025 Neurodivergent Play Festival), and The Toy (Production: Duluth Playhouse ‘What She Said’ Festival). Her TV pilot, The “Academy” was recognized as a semi-finalist for the 2022 Humanitas Prize Carol Mendelsohn College Drama Award. Sydney is a resident company member of EPIC Players, the Brooklyn-based neurodiverse theatre company with whom she performs often. Sydney earned her BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch.

Somebody In Bumf_ck Montana Loves Me - Trinity and Will are childhood friends living in rural Montana. Will craves change, and Trinity fears it more than anything. Together, they attempt to usurp the futures they dread they are fated to live out. 
 

Tanya O'Debra is a New York City-based playwright and performer originally from the gutters of Quincy, MA. She is a 2024 NYSCA and LMCC grantee for her plays Judith and Hockey Wives, respectively. Her play Shut UP, Emily Dickinson won the Jill Cummins MacLean Prize, the Ada Comstock Magic Grant for $25,000 (which funded a three-week run at Abrons Arts Center), and was presented by the Academy of Music in Northampton, MA. Her play Them What Brung You won The Denis Johnston Playwriting Award and The Elizabeth Wanning Harries Prize. Co-written with the late Diane O'Debra, The Secrets of Avondale Falls was presented by the Cincinnati Fringe Festival. Published by Original Works, her play Radio Star has been produced internationally, receiving numerous awards and accolades. She is a graduate of Smith College where she won The Elizabeth Drew Prize. Performance credits include Patrice O’Debra in Straight Up Vampire (Joe’s Pub), The Evil Queen in Snow White (New Acting Company), and Amanda McCloud in The Ultimate Stimulus (Dixon Place, The Brick), as well as being one half of the long-time comedic sister duo, The O'Debra Twins (Village Voice Best of New York Award, NY Mag Approval Matrix: Highbrow/Brilliant).

Hockey Wives - The real action in the last game of the 1995-96 North Quincy High School Hockey season isn’t on the ice with the players—it’s in the stands with their girlfriends. A seemingly frivolous night amongst friends ultimately becomes a battleground where far-reaching social consequences are threatened at every turn. 

Isabella Pipitone is a playwright, director, and comedian living and working in Brooklyn, New York. They have written, directed, and produced three original one-act plays, a full-length reading of their play Grandma at Rattlestick Playwright’s theater. Their screenplay Baby Weight was a finalist for the Fusion Film Feature Screenplay Award. Their one person show Love is currently being workshopped in venues across the city, most recently at Caveat, and heading to Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August. They write to understand; love, unbridled empathy, and a sense of humor is a through line in all their work.

Grandma - GRANDMA follows Lila, a heartbroken yet aspiring clown, as she takes care of her ruthless and witty Grandmother Tini after she's diagnosed with dementia. Tini just wants her to do one simple favor: assist with her euthanasia. 
A dark comedy filled with clownery, opera singing, and committing to the bit.

Malikah Marie Stafford is a television writer, playwright, singer, and poet from Atlantic City, NJ. After receiving her B.A. in Communication Studies with a minor in Africana Studies from Stockton University, she matriculated to New York University, and acquired her M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, with a focus in television writing. Stafford explores the variations of the Black experience in her work. She believes in the adage of not writing about Black people being Black, but rather writing about Black people simply being. By centering this notion in her work , Stafford hopes to create pathways of healing so that people can understand how Black people are uniquely human.

Domino - Set in the trenches of Wafu City, a group of inner-city teenagers engage in a dangerous game in which no one wins.