Fil-Am women playwrights reap top awards
Filipino American playwrights (from left) Rehana Lew Mirza, Lily Padilla and Ren Dara Santiago. CONTRIBUTED
NEW YORK — Three Filipino American women playwrights have won top awards for their respective works.
Lily Padilla won the 2019 Yale Drama Series Prize for her play “How to Defend Yourself.” The award includes $10,000, publication of the play by Yale University Press and a staged reading of the play.
The play is about a university sorority that starts a self-defense class in response to a series of campus rapes.
The award is given out annually by the David Charles Horn Foundation in an international competition for emerging playwrights where all entries are read blindly. The winner is selected by one playwright judge, who this year was Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar.
Akhtar, who chose “How to Defend Yourself” from over 1,750 submissions from 65 countries, said in a statement, “Lily Padilla’s play about desire, defense, and the insidious, labyrinthine reach of rape culture is that rare thing: Formally inventive, timely, accessible, and soulful. I can’t wait for people to experience it.”
Padilla, whose father is Filipino Puerto Rican and mother is Colombian, was born and raised in Poway, California. She studied for a master’s in playwriting at University of California-San Diego and founded the American Nightcap play series at Intar Theatre in New York.
Padilla, whose credits include “(w)holeness,” “Incidental Friends,” “Other People,” said in a statement, “I feel so grateful and inspired to win the Yale Drama Prize.”
“‘How to Defend Yourself’ comes from listening to the parts of me that were shamed into silence; to be able to write it was healing beyond what I had imagined. That folks are connecting deeply with the play is gorgeous affirmation of what is possible when we act together in service of our collective liberation. I am in awe of and deep gratitude for the many folks who have given their energies, time, talents and hearts to holding these stories with me.”
“How to Defend Yourself” will run this month in Louisville, Kentucky at Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 2019 Humana Festival of New American Plays. The production is a co-world premiere with Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater, which will stage the play in 2020.
Previous Fil-Am winners of the Yale Drama Series Prize include Clarence Coo in 2012 for his “Beautiful Province.”
Ren Dara Santiago
Ren Dara Santiago is the inaugural winner of New York-based Rising Phoenix Repertory Theater’s Cornelia Street American Playwriting Award, presented to an emerging playwright of exceptional work ethic, character and talent.
Santiago’s win was announced late last year; she was awarded at a reception this February. The award, named after Cornelia Street in the city’s West Village, includes $3,500 and publication of one the winner’s works in Rising Phoenix Rep’s magazine Caffe Cino.
Other plays by Santiago, a native New Yorker whose mother is Filipino and father is Puerto Rican, include “The Siblings Play” and “Something in the Balete Tree.”
Rising Phoenix Rep artistic director Daniel Talbott said in a statement, “Ren personifies the spirit of this award. She is an extraordinary talent, an explosive, infinitely original voice, and a heart-led collaborator. We couldn’t be more honored to have her grace Rising Phoenix Rep’s first award.”
Rehana Lew Mirza
Rehana Lew Mirza won a 2019 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater-Studio Production for “Bhangin’ It” which she co-wrote with her spouse Mike Lew and composer/lyricist Sam Willmott.
Given out by the New York-based American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Richard Rodgers Awards nurture talented composers and playwrights by enabling their musicals to be produced in New York City.
“Bhangin’ It” is about Mary, who is half-Indian, who gets kicked off her bhangra team (Indian folk dance) for not being “Indian enough.” She goes on to form her own rag-tag multicultural team.
Mirza studied dramatic writing at New York University and took up a master’s in playwriting at Columbia University. Credits include “Soldier X” and “Barriers.”
Mirza, a New Jersey native whose mother is Filipino and father is Pakistani, is cofounder of production company Desipina & Co. and was previously co-director of Ma-Yi Writers Lab, an Asian American playwrights group developed by Ma-Yi Theater (a group founded by Filipino American theater makers.)
Her play “Hatef**k” has its world premiere this month in New York. Staged by Women’s Project Theater and Colt Coeur, the play is about intense literature professor Layla as she accuses brashly iconoclastic novelist Imran of trading in anti-Muslim stereotypes and the growing attraction between them.
“Hatef**k” runs until March 31 at Women’s Project Theater, 2162 Broadway and 76th St., New York. Visit Wptheater.org.
“How to Defend Yourself” runs March 13-April 7 at Bingham Theatre, 316 W. Main St., Louisville, Kentucky. Visit Actorstheatre.org.
