The Stanley Drama Award

2023 Stanley Drama Rules and ApplicationStanley Drama History

 


Submissions for the 2024 Stanley Drama Award will be announced soon.

Click here for the entry form.


The Stanley Drama Award offers a first place prize of $2000 for an original full-length play, musical, or one-act play sequence that has not been professionally produced or received trade book publication. Writers of musicals are urged to submit music on tape or cd. We consider only one submission (a single full-length play, musical, or one-act sequence) per playwright. Plays entered previously in the competition may not be resubmitted. Former Stanley Drama Award winners are not eligible to compete.   

The Stanley Drama Award was established in 1957 by Staten Island philanthropist Alma Guyon Timolat Stanley and endowed through the Stanley-Timolat Foundation to encourage and support aspiring playwrights. The national Stanley Award competition is administered by the Wagner College Theatre program, listed for the last decade among the top five college theater programs in the country in the Princeton Review’s annual Best Colleges Guide. The award carries with it a monetary prize along with the distinction of joining the illustrious list of past Stanley Award winners.

The Stanley Drama Award has a long and distinguished history. Past winners include Terrence McNally’s “This Side of the Door” (aka “Things That Go Bump in the Night”), Lonne Elder III’s “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men,” and Jonathan Larson’s “Rent.” Among those judging for the Stanley Award have been playwrights Edward Albee and Paul Zindel, actresses Geraldine Page and Kim Stanley, and TV producer/pioneer talk-show host David Susskind.


Congratulations to our 2022 Stanley Drama Award winner

Luke Yankee for Marilyn, Mom and Me

LUKE YANKEE- Luke Yankee is a critically acclaimed playwright, author, director, and producer and actor. His memoir, Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing up with Eileen Heckart has been called “One of the most compassionate, illuminating showbiz books ever written” and was named “One of the Ten Best Celebrity Memoirs of All Time” (Michael Musto – Village Voice). It is published by Random House with a foreword by Mary Tyler Moore. His latest book, The Art of Writing for the Theatre, is published by Methuen Drama for Bloomsbury Press. In addition to providing practical tools on the art of script analysis, playwriting and criticism, it includes interviews he conducted with eighteen internationallyacclaimed playwrights, librettists and critics, including David Lindsay-Abaire, Marsha Norman,David Zippel, Donald Margulies, Beth Henley, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Samuel D. Hunter, NaomiWallace, Joe DiPietro, Charles Busch, Octavio Solis, Sheldon Harnick, Kia Corthron, LynGardner, and Ben Brantley. Luke’s play, The Last Lifeboat is published by Dramatists Play Service and has received more than 55 productions in the U.S. and Canada. Other plays include The Man Who Killed the Cure, Confessions of a Star Maker, The Jesus Hickey (which premiered in Los Angeles, starring Harry Hamlin) and A Place at Forest Lawn (which has had readings and workshops on both coasts, featuring Betty White, Frances Sternhagen, Marian Seldes, Marion Ross, Millicent Martin, Barbara Rush, Marcia Cross and John Glover, Steven Culp and Tony Goldwyn).His television specs and pilots have all won or been finalists in major contests, including Sundance, Warner Bros. TV Writer’s Workshop, and Scriptapalooza. His screenplay version of The Last Lifeboat was one of ten scripts chosen internationally for the Dream Ago Screenwriting Workshop in the Swiss Alps. As a professional director and producer for more than 30 years, Mr. Yankee has worked on and off Broadway at venues ranging from Radio City Music Hall to the Crystal Symphony, assistant directed six Broadway shows for such legendary directors as Harold Prince, Ellis Rabb, Brian Murray and Gerald Freedman, and has served as the artistic director of two regional theatres. He is the head of playwriting at California State University - Fullerton, where he also teaches classes in script analysis and theatre criticism. In addition, he is an adjunct faculty member at Chapman University, where he teaches playwriting and musical theatre performance. www.lukeyankee.com.


Congratulations to our 2022 finalists

Robert Kerr for Ask Me Anything
&
Harold Hodge Jr. (Book) and Charlie Romano (Music and Lyrics)) for Call Me From the Grave