Sarah Ruhl Wins Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award

The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust announced that Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award-nominated playwright Sarah Ruhl is this year's recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. Ruhl will be honored at the Ninth Annual "Mimi" Awards, presented on Monday, November 14, at Lincoln Center Theater. The "Mimi" Awards are presented annually to honor the outstanding artistry and accomplishments of some of the most gifted American playwrights.

"I was moved, honored, shocked and incredibly heartened to receive this award that seemed to fall from the sky," Ruhl said. "The generosity and thoughtfulness of this award is staggering. I'm so humbled to be part of the remarkable group that has received this award, and so grateful to the Steinberg Charitable Trust for renewing the life-blood of the theatre with every award it gives to playwrights."

The Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award is presented biennially to honor and encourage the artistic excellence and achievement of an American playwright whose body of work has made significant contributions to the American theatre. The recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award receives a cash award of $200,000.
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"The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust is incredibly honored to recognize the outstanding career of Sarah Ruhl this year. Her work sparks conversation in audiences of all ages with its emotionally� vivid language, and we look forward to seeing -- and experiencing -- what comes next," Steinberg board member Jim Steinberg said.
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Paige Evans, 2016 Steinberg Advisory Committee Member and Artistic Director at Signature Theatre Company, said that Sarah Ruhl was unique, adding, "She fills her intelligent and highly theatrical plays with striking oddities and playful humor. Sarah is a prolific playwright of great distinction. I can't think of anyone more deserving of this year's Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award."
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"Sarah Ruhl has a bold and unique theatrical voice. Since I first got to know her work over a decade ago, I have been consistently impressed with how artfully she marries her expansive lyricism with her exceptional imagination to produce complex and brave portrayals of human existence -- our crises, passions and contradictions. This recognition by the Steinberg Foundation is well deserved -- with a magnificently rich and varied body of work already to her credit, I look forward to seeing the new work from this highly accomplished artist," Lynne Meadow, 2016 Steinberg Advisory Committee Member and Artistic Director at Manhattan Theatre Club, said.
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"Sarah's incredibly impressive body of work was the driving force behind the committee's choice. One of the goals of the award is to encourage the winner to continue writing for the theater. It seemed obvious that Sarah would be a potent and influential contributor to the theater for years to come. I stand in awe of her remarkable accomplishments while enormously anticipating what comes next." Carole Rothman, 2016 Steinberg Advisory Committee Member and Artistic Director at Second Stage Theatre, said.
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Sarah Ruhl's plays include "For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday," "The Oldest Boy," "In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play," "The Clean House," "Passion Play," "Dead Man's Cell Phone," "Melancholy Play," "Eurydice," "Orlando," "Late: A Cowboy Song," "Dear Elizabeth" and "Stage Kiss." She has been a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and a Tony Award nominee. Her plays have been produced on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre by Lincoln Center Theater, off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage and at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

Her plays have been produced regionally all over the country, with premieres at Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre and the Piven Theatre Workshop in Chicago. Her plays have also been produced internationally and translated into more than 12 languages.

Originally from Chicago, Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. She has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Whiting Award, the Lily Award, a PEN award for mid-career playwrights and the MacArthur "Genius" Award. Her book of essays, "100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write," was published by Faber and Faber last Fall and was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. Ruhl teaches at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

For more information, visit www.SarahRuhlplaywright.com