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NEW YORK CITY: The American Playwriting Foundation and Building for the Arts have introduced that Shayok Misha Chowdhury and Laura Grill Jaye, recognized professionally as Grill and Chowder, have gained the Relentless Musical Award for his or her new musical How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia. They will obtain $65,000—the most important money prize in American theatre offered to an unproduced work—in addition to alternatives to have How the White Girl… developed at numerous theatrical establishments, together with a sequence of staged readings at Theatre Row.
The annual Relentless Award was created in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman. It is offered this yr to a musical submission in honor of Adam Schlesinger, the Oscar- and Tony-nominated, Emmy- and Grammy-winning songwriter (Fountains of Wayne, Cry-Baby, My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Bedwetter) who died of COVID-19 issues in 2020. Schlesinger had served as a creative advisor in the course of the creation of the Relentless Award in 2015.
“The Relentless Award’s purpose is not just to honor Phil’s and Adam’s legacies, but to extend them through the launching of new works selected through the lens of their artistic sensibilities,” mentioned choice committee chief David Bar Katz in a press release. “Our judges come together through this award to uplift artists whose work embodies Adam’s and Phil’s fearlessness, passion, humor, and relentless commitment to truth in art.”
Grill and Chowder have written musicals concerning the physics of sunshine, the Armenian genocide, boys who eat grime, Nineteenth-century coal miners, and the e-book of Genesis. Their work has been seen or developed at Ars Nova, New York Theatre Workshop, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and NYMF. How the White Girl…is described as “an unabashedly nostalgic ode to the ’90s, growing up gay, and the messiness of cultural memory.”
The choice committee additionally acknowledged three finalists for the Relentless Musical Award: Hills On Fire by Joe Stevens and Keaton Wooden, Shoot for the Moon by David Gomez and John-Michael Lyles, and XY by Oliver Houser.
The judges for the 2022 Relentless Musical Award included Rachel Bloom, James Iha, Lynn Nottage, Thomas Bradshaw, David Javerbaum, Sam Hollander, Brontez Purnell, and Stephin Merrit.