Samuel D. Hunter, Sanaz Toossi, More Win 2023 Dramatists Guild Awards

Samuel D. Hunter and Sanaz Toossi have been named 2023 winners of the Dramatists Guild's Hull-Warriner Award, for their plays A Case for the Existence of God and English, respectively. The award is presented annually by the Dramatists Guild Council in recognition of works dealing with controversial subjects. Hunter and Toossi will be honored along with other Dramatists Guild Award winners at a May 15 ceremony at Joe's Pub.

Finalists for the honor included Joshua Harmon for Prayer for the French Republic, James Ijames for Fat Ham, Mona Mansour for The Vagrant Trilogy, and Bruce Norris for Downstate.

Hunter's A Case for the Existence of God made its world premiere Off-Broadway via Signature Theatre in 2022, directed by David Cromer. The play, about two characters' disparate experiences of marginality, is a 2023 Lucille Lortel Award nominee for Outstanding Play.

Toossi made her New York playwriting debut with English, which also premiered Off-Broadway in 2022, via Atlantic Theatre Company. The work follows four Iranians in a TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) class that devolves into chaos after the class leader bans Farsi from the classroom. The play won 2022 Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards for Best New Play.

Caridad Svich has been named the winner of this year's Flora Roberts Award. The Guild additionally revealed two Lifetime Achievement Honors being bestowed in 2023, to satirist Jules Feiffer and, in a joint award, I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road writers Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford.

Winners of the Guild's Horton Foote, Frederick Loewe, Dramatists Legal Defense Fund Defender, and Lanford Wilson Awards will be announced at the May 15 ceremony.

Established in 1919, the Dramatists Guild of America is a national, professional membership trade association that counts playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists writing for the theatre amongst its members. The Guild was established for the purpose of aiding dramatists in protecting both the artistic and economic integrity of their work.