Kristoffer Diaz Receives NYT Outstanding Playwright Award

Scott Heller and Kristoffer Diaz

The New York Times presented its 2011 Outstanding Playwright Award to Kristoffer Diaz Tuesday for his play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity produced in New York by Second Stage Theatre.                 
“The play appropriates both the comedy and cruelty of professional wrestling in order to explore the complex dance America does with its minorities,” said Sylviane Gold, selection committee chair. “We were floored by its swaggering language, vivid theatricality and sheer energy.”

In addition to Ms. Gold, the members of the selection committee are Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights, Richard Greenberg, James Lapine and Lynn Nottage and, from The New York Times, writers and editors Scott Heller, Sam Sifton and Andrea Stevens.  The playwright Edward Albee, who is also a committee member, was unable to participate in this year’s judging.

“It's an incredible honor to receive this year's New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award. I'm joining some awfully good company in Tarell McCraney and Dan LeFranc,”  Diaz said.  “I've been blessed with great good fortune and support throughout the 'Chad Deity' process, and being recognized by The Times is a humbling continuation of a wild ride.”

The award was presented by Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, at the Times Center in New York followed by a performance of a monologue from the play by Desmin Borges (who starred in the Off- Broadway production and who will reprise his role in an upcoming LA production) and an interview session with Heller.
 
The award, created in 2009, was established to encourage and support an American playwright whose work recently received its professional debut in New York.  The past winners are Tarell Alvin McCraney for The Brothers Size and Dan LeFranc for Sixty Miles to Silver Lake.