2026 Goldberg Play Prize Winner and Finalists Announced!

We are thrilled to announce the winners and finalists for the 2026 Goldberg Play Prize.

The Goldberg Play Prize is given annually for a noteworthy full-length play written by a student in a playwriting class in the Department of Dramatic Writing. This prize comes with a monetary award and additional funds for the production of a public reading.

The winner is DARK ROOM by ash bell (MFA '25).

This year's award was juried by the Goldberg Award Committee of Mona Mansour, Carl Holder and C.A. Johnson.

The finalists are 18 West 11th St by Cori Diaz (BFA '25), Best Practices by Ally Merkel (MFA '25), and Jinx by Daniel Yee (BFA '25).

Additional honorable mentions are I Could Make You Care by Scott Thomas Huffman (MFA '26) and Carter & Louise by Jenny McDonald (BFA '25).

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

Please join us in congratulating these tremendous writers.
 

DARK ROOM - When an esteemed bridal photographer begins to lose her eyesight, she coordinates a photoshoot with her estranged daughter. A theatrical portrait of the pain of forgiveness through a decade-long moment in time.

ash bell is a New York based playwright and screenwriter. She is a recent graduate from NYU with an MFA in Dramatic Writing. She co-founded the Denver based theatre company, Pipedream Productions, and Project Outbreak, a 6 week radio theatre festival created and produced in isolation during 2020. She was the Audio Tour creator for the Denver Center of the Performing Arts’ Camp Christmas. Her short play, Metal on Metal, was produced at NYU’s Festival of Short Works and NYU’s Global Urban Summit. Her play, scouts (semi-finalist: O’Neill, Austin Film Festival, Stanley Drama Award) won round one of SoHo Playhouse’s Lighthouse Series and will be returning for round two this July.

18 West 11th St - In a West Village basement, five twenty-somethings are building a bomb to protest the Vietnam War. The only things more combustible are their feelings toward one another.

Cori Diaz has had her plays workshopped with LaMama’s Experiments, SheNYC Arts, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center’s Rough Draft Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre LA, Abingdon Theatre Company, The Bechdel Group, Playwrights on Park, and Concord Theatricals’ Off-Off Broadway Festival. She was a semifinalist for the Ojai Playwrights Conference, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Stanley Drama Award, The Civilians’ R&D Group, and the Rattlestick Van Lier Fellowship. She is a member of the 2026 Moxie Arts Incubator, the 2026 24 Hour Plays: Nationals Cohort, the PlayPenn Playwrights Cohort, a recent member of Life Jacket Theatre’s Writer’s Room, and a recipient of the EST/Sloan commission. Her play, Carpal Tunnel, will have a workshop production at IRT Theater this October. coridiaz.com

Best Practices - The employees of a mega-corp’s best practices department spend their days stapling and unstapling stacks of paper, click clacking through LinkedIn Learning, and pretending to work while staring at their computers. Best Practices is a rom-com about four coworkers and the obsessions they develop in order to find meaning in the (click clack click clack click clack).

Ally Merkel is a Brooklyn-based playwright. She has developed work with the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the Under Construction Playwrights Group at The Road Theatre Company, the COOP’s Clusterf**ck vol 3 working group, and has an upcoming workshop with New York Stage and Film. Ally is an alumna of Theater Masters’ National MFA Playwrights Festival “Take Ten” (2024) and of the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals program (2022). Her short play Carrots, about a teenage boy who wants his best friend to bite off his finger, is published with Concord Theatricals. Ally’s work has also been seen onstage at The Tank, The Fled Collective, New Perspectives Theatre Company, and The 24 Hour Plays Viral Monologues. Ally has a BA in Political Science from Kenyon College and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU.

Jinx - In order to cure himself of a fatal curse, Sharly Jinx makes a deal with a sorcerer who agrees to help him achieve immortality.

Daniel Yee is a writer, cartoonist, and graphic designer. Fascinated by words and images alike, he specializes in poster design for film & theater and obsessively creates comics. His stories thrive on lyrical dialogue, magic, and utter absurdity.

I Could Make You Care - In a bayfront home, on the South Shore of Long Island, Theresa and her adult son Anthony “AJ” Junior live in disrepair after being hit by Hurricane Susanna. When Coastal Engineer Frankie offers a drastic solution to their flood problems, Theresa and AJ must decide whether to give up on their home or protect it at all costs.

Scott Thomas Huffman (he/him) is a Brooklyn-based playwright and director whose work has been described as “gay suicide”. He is an O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist for MANEATER: The Fucking Psycho Twink Play and a Green Violet Script Call Winner for I Could Make You Care. His play Children’s Crusade toured across the Northeast; collaborating with The New York Restoration Project to provide free theatre in gardens across NYC. He’s written and directed all his plays including SIEGE, The Myrmidon and Birthday Boy, Bullshit Boy. He recently received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU.

Carter & Louise - Carter & Louise centers the story of Louise Parnell, a seventeen-year-old high school student, and Carter, her very best friend. With the help of their English teacher Ms. Dunlap, Louise endeavors to confess her romantic feelings to Carter before they both leave for university, and finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about their friendship in the process.

Jenny McDonald (She/Her/Hers) is a graduate of New York University's Department of Dramatic Writing, with a concentration in Playwriting and a minor in English and American Literature. She self-produced her original play, Carter & Louise, in the Goldberg Theater with the help of incredibly talented friends and collaborators. Predominantly interested in writing small-cast dramas, her work engages with complex interpersonal relationships and the pressures that bend, and sometimes break, those bonds.