About The Gassner Award

The John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award Competition fosters new playwrights and scripts through this important competition established by Molly Gassner, wife of theatre historian John Gassner. The Award was created in 1967 to honor the late John Gassner (1903-1967) for his lifetime dedication to all aspects of professional and academic theatre.

Two cash prizes will be awarded: First Prize of $1000, and Second Prize of $500. The judges may withhold prizes if in their opinion no play merits the award. Only full-length scripits are accepted.

2009 Gassner Award Winner, First Prize

James McLindon for his play Faith

In the past two years, James McLindon has had 14 plays produced in theatres across America, 13 of them world premieres. His plays hve been produced or developed at The Lark, PlayPenn, Abingdon, Samuel French Festival, CAP21, hotINK Festival, Irish Rep, Penguin Rep, Victory Gardens, Theatricum Botanicum, Colony, Circus Theatricals, Grove, Ashland New Plays Festival, and Seven Devils Conference. He has also won or been a finalist for the Heideman Award, the Kaufman and Hart Prize, Jefferson Citation, the John Gassner New Play Festival, the Jane Bingham Prize, the Siena College International Competition, the W. Keith Hedrick Playwriting Competition and many others. His plays have been published by Dramatic Publishing and Level 4 Press.

2009 Gassner Award Winner, Second Prize

Matt K. Miller for his play Beat Aside Apollo's Arrow

Primarily an actor, Matt K. Miller's writing consists of the screenplay Caught In The Act; a full-length animation screenplay Beach Bunnies written for Bobtown Productions; stories sold to television animation programs such as James Bond, Jr.; the full-length play Beat Aside Apollo's Arrow; a one act play, When the Twain Met, which was published in the New York Theatre magazine This Month on Stage; and a book that takes a comic look at the opera world, Opera for Oafs currently seeking publication.