Theater News

Christina Anderson Wins 2022 Horton Foote Prize

She wins for her play ”The Ripple, the Wave that Carried Me Home”, which is now making its world premiere at Berkeley Rep.

Christina Anderson attends the 2017 Broadway opening night on Lynn Nottage's Sweat with Paula Vogel. Nottage and Vogel will present Anderson with the 2022 Horton Foote Prize.
Christina Anderson attends the 2017 Broadway opening night on Lynn Nottage's Sweat with Paula Vogel. Nottage and Vogel will present Anderson with the 2022 Horton Foote Prize.
(© David Gordon)

Christina Anderson has won the 2022 Horton Foote Prize for playwriting for her play The Ripple, the Wave that Carried Me Home, which is currently making its world premiere at Berkeley Rep (through October 16) and will later play Chicago's Goodman Theatre January 15 through February 12, 2023.

The Ripple, the Wave that Carried Me Home is described as, "a poignant, transporting, and quietly subversive story of racial justice, political legacy, and family forgiveness. Janice's childhood was steeped in her parents' activism as they fought for the integration of public swimming pools in 1960s Kansas and taught scores of Black children to swim. But Janice later steps away from her parents' politics and starts her own life and family far away—until she's pressed into speaking at a ceremony honoring her father. the ripple, the wave that carried me home is a moving exploration of a family's response to injustice and a daughter's reckoning with her political inheritance."

The prize comes with $50,000 and a limited edition of Keith Carter's iconic photograph of Horton Foote, which is found in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Anderson's former teachers and mentors, Paula Vogel and Lynn Nottage, will present her with the prize on October 24 at a private ceremony at New York's Lotos Club.

Anderson was nominated for a Tony Award last year for her work on the book of Paradise Square.

Previous winners of the Horton Foote Prize include Lynn Nottage for Ruined, Will Eno for Middletown, Jordan Harrison for Marjorie Prime, and Lauren Yee for Cambodian Rock Band.