L. Arnold Weissberger Award Winners

Eligible scripts for the L. Arnold Weissberger Award ($10,000) and Jay S. Harris Commission ($10,000) must be full-length, unpublished, unproduced, and not optioned for production during the season in which it is being considered.

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

Readings of the winning play take place at the Williamstown Theatre Festival every summer.

Since 1998, the L. Arnold Weissberger Award has recognized the following new plays and emerging playwrights:

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

*Jay S. Harris Commission was added to the Award.

For more information on the L. Arnold Weissberger Award and Jay S. Harris Commission, click here.