Playwright Mark Schultz Wins Kesselring Prize

Mark Schultz, whose play A Brief History of Helen of Troy was produced by Soho Rep last season under the title Everything Will Be Different, has won The National Arts Club’s 2006 Kesselring Prize for Playwriting. Bruce Norris, whose play The Pain and the Itch is currently on stage at Playwrights Horizons, has been named as recipient of the Kesselring’s Honorable Mention Award.

The awards will be presented at 5pm on Sunday, November 19 in a ceremony at The National Arts Club (15 Gramercy Park South). The festivities will also feature a staged reading of a play by Schultz, directed by Michael Parva. In addition to the awards, Schultz will receive $15,000 and Norris will receive $5,000.

Schultz was nominated for the prize by Manhattan Class Company, where he is co-coordinator of their Playwrights’ Coalition; Norris was nominated by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, where The Pain and the Itch had its world premiere in 2005. This year’s nominees also included Jordan Harrison, Noah Haidle, Mat Smart, Tanya Barfield, Gina Gionfriddo, and M. Shephard-Massat.

The winners were chosen by playwright John Guare, playwright/performer Eric Bogosian, and Lincoln Center dramaturg Anne Cattaneo. Previous winners of the Kesselring Prize include David Auburn, Tony Kushner, Nicky Silver, Anna Deavere Smith, and David Lindsay-Abaire.