2025 Goldberg Play Prize Winner and Finalists Announced!

We are thrilled to announce the winners and finalists for the 2025 Goldberg Play Prize.

The winner is the Apologetics by Eka Savajol (BFA '24).

This year's award was juried by the Goldberg Award Committee of MJ Kaufman, Cusi Cram, Caridad Svitch, Lucy Thurber, and Antoinette Nwandu.

The finalists are MAiD in America by Erin Gruodis-Gimbel (MFA '25) and Dog Park by Lisa Konoplisky (MFA '24).

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

Please join us in congratulating these tremendous writers.
 

Eka Savajol (they/he) is a transmasc playwright, lighting designer, and multidisciplinary artist interested in spirals. Eka’s writing, lighting, and performance work has appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe, East to Edinburgh at 59E59, La Mama as part of Poetry Electric, the Tank, the Chain, Colorado College; in print and online journals, play festivals, experimental musical albums, and more. They were a 2025 FABnyc LES Young Artists of Color fellow, and a finalist for the New Roots Summer and Fall 2023 Residencies. Eka is also one of the co-founders of the publishing collective Active Chapter, which has hosted events and workshops with Hive Mind Books, Rash NYC, and the University Settlement Society. Through the collective, Eka has worked to put out multiple publications including the recurring series, Trans Opinions Periodically.

the Apologetics - Self-described “transgender supremacist" Dev used to date his fellow transmasc codependent bestie, Finn. Finn, now in an inpatient facility, used to date cis pretty boy Nico. Now, Dev is dating Nico, and they’re all very, very sorry.

Erin Gruodis-Gimbel is a New York-based writer, teacher, dramaturg, and chicken wrangler. Her work has been described as “comedy that makes you cry,” or at least that’s what she thinks she read written on a tear-stained tissue someone left in the audience. Her plays have been performed at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival, the Queens Short Play Festival, and with No Exit Theater Collective and Walking Shadow Readers Theater. She is an apprentice dramaturg with the New Jersey Play Lab. Her short story, “There’s Nazis in Them There Fredonian Hills” was selected as the best fiction piece published by JAKE Magazine in 2023, and earned her a Best of the Net Literary Award nomination. MFA: NYU.  

MAiD in America - A year after 25-year-old Cassandra has fallen ill with an incurable neurological condition, her insurance stops covering the only medication that has helped keep her stable. But her doctor presents her with a new option for care- the freshly expanded assisted suicide program.

Lisa Konoplisky - Lisa’s plays have been produced in NY, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Alaska, and Lansing. Her play, Bullseye, was recently produced at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Her plays have been developed with The Bechdel Group and The Workshop Theatre in NY and Blank Theatre in LA. Residencies include The Ragdale Foundation, Jentel, and Elsewhere Studios. She is a three-time LAMBDA Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellow, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference, and a Thomas Watson fellow in Brighton, England, as well as a finalist for the Chicago Dramatist Residency. She was a semi-finalist for the Inge Festival, the Ashland New Play Festival, and the Shattered Globe Global Playwrights’ Series in Chicago. Staged readings of her plays have been held at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference for nine consecutive years, and she was a guest artist at the University of Wisconsin Theatre Department and the University of Wyoming Theatre and Dance Department. She’s currently Co-Producer of Terry Curtis Fox’s new play, Transgression, at HERE Arts Center in SoHo. She is a certified Meisner Technique Teacher and a SFK-certified Kettlebell instructor. Education: BA, Lafayette College, MFA (Creative Writing), Columbia College/Chicago, and MFA (Dramatic Writing), NYU/Tisch (2024).  

Dog Park - Two very different women forge an unexpected friendship at a local dog park. But when fear and shame intrude and secrets emerge, they discover both the limits of intimacy and the courage necessary to reckon with the cost of their desires.