NEW YORK — Many times in his life, playwright David Bar Katz didn’t know how he was going to pay the bills. These days, he’s helping the next generation of artists facing that same dilemma.
Katz oversees The Relentless Award, the largest annual cash prize in American theater to a playwright in recognition of a new play. It’s celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and, as always, seeking submissions that “exhibit fearlessness.” The award also honors musical theater.
“Being able to create under financial stress is so difficult, and so anything we can do to give artists a little breathing room is what we want,” says Katz.
The award was inspired by Katz’s friend and collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman, the late actor who was described as relentless in his pursuit of truth in his art. A musical theater honor was added after the 2020 death of another of Katz’s friends, Fountains of Wayne co-founder Adam Schlesinger.
“To me, a big aspect of the award — the musical and the straight play — is not merely honoring Phil and Adam, but the idea of expanding their artistic legacies,” says Katz.
Some of the plays that have been recognized have gone on to great success, like Aleshea Harris’ 2016 winner “Is God Is,” which has been made into a movie starring Janelle Monáe, Vivica A. Fox, Sterling K. Brown and Kara Young.
“Alicia typifies the whole point of the award,” says Katz. “I think at a moment in her life where she, like so many of us other artists, had kind of had it, she won the award and that was incredibly meaningful in her career.”
Other successes include Sarah DeLappe’s “The Wolves” and Clare Barron’s “Dance Nation” — joint winners in 2015 — who have gone on to become Pulitzer Prize finalists. “The impact, especially of those three plays, has been profound in theater,” Katz says.
The musical and the playwriting honors alternate each year. The winner this year is Jack D. Coen, who created the musical comedy “Jo Jenkins Before the Galactic Court of Consciousness.”
Cohen will receive $65,000 and his musical — as well as the works of the finalists — will be honored at a ceremony and performance on Oct. 12 at Building for the Arts’ multi-theater complex, Theatre Row. Chris Collingwood, of Fountains of Wayne, will be performing as well.
The Relentless Award seeks full-length works by American applicants who haven’t previously been produced. All submissions are judged anonymously.
The Relentless Award’s selection committee this year consisted of Katz, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” co-creator Rachel Bloom, Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown, Emmy Award-winner David Javerbaum, songwriter and producer Sam Hollander, composer and arranger Laura Grill Jaye, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, musician and writer Brontez Purnell and Obie-winning playwright Lucy Thurber.
The American Playwriting Foundation, which gives out the award, will be able to showcase winners at Theatre Row, a crucial step for budding artists.
“The first step was getting this money to artists that need it and giving them a launching place and some notoriety. But the dream was also then to be able to put it up because that is the hardest thing to get done now,” Katz says. “Everybody has readings and no one has a production.”
“Jo Jenkins Before the Galactic Court of Consciousness” is described as an inventive, existential sci-fi comedy about a marine-biologist-turned-actuary who must defend humanity to an intergalactic council.
Katz says it deals with the environmental crisis in a novel way.
“We’ve all heard the polemic, and it’s not really working the way we want it to. But a musical like this, what it does is it appeals to the heart and the soul, and not the intellect,” he says. “That maybe can move the needle.”
