L. Arnold Weissberger Award Winners
Eligible scripts for the L. Arnold Weissberger Award must be full-length, unpublished, and unproduced. The winner receives $15,000 and two finalists each receive $2,500. In addition, Playwrights Horizons representatives including Artistic Director Adam Greenfield will engage in dramaturgical conversations with the winning playwright and produce a workshop in Playwrights’ New Works Lab, culminating in a reading in the Niarchos Rehearsal Studio.
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Madeline Wise and Lennox Duong in Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia (2024 Reading at Williamstown)
Photo credit: Arden Dickson
Andy Lucien in Tiny Father (2022 Reading at Williamstown)
Photo credit: Jackson Miles
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​​​The Weissberger Award has recognized the following new plays and emerging playwrights:
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2025 - Cephianne's Reflection by Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom
2024 – Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia by Beth Hyland
2023 – Chapters of a Floating Life by Clarence Coo
2022 – Tiny Father by Mike Lew
2021 – Wet Brain by John J. Caswell, Jr.
2020 – English by Sanaz Toossi (winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Drama)
2019 – Cinched/Strapped by Selina Fillinger
2018 – Selling Kabul by Sylvia Khoury (finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama)​
​2017 – Noura by Heather Raffo
2016* – Hannah and the Dread Gazebo by Jiehae Par
2014 – Kill Floor by Abe Koogler
2013 – Five Mile Lake by Rachel Bonds
2012 – Paradise Blue by Dominique Morisseau
2011 – The Body of an American by Dan O’Brien
2010 – Choir Boy by Tarell Alvin McCraney
2009 – The Substance of Bliss by Tony Glazer​
2008 – Sense of an Ending by Ken Urban
2007 – The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson
2006 – Truth and Reconciliation by Etan Frankel
2005 – Said Said by Kenneth Lin
2004 – BFE by Julia Cho
2003 – Arrangements by Ken Weitzman
​​2002 – Motherhouse by Victor Lodato
2001 – The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock by Catherine Trieschmann
2000 – Jump Slash Cut by Neena Beber
1999 – Into the Fire by Deborah Brevoort
1998 – Infrared by Mac Wellman
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*Jay S. Harris Commission was added to the Award from 2016-2025.
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