The Leah Ryan Fund Announces Winner Of “The Leah”: GLORIA MAJULE'S CULTURE SHOCK

The Leah Ryan Fund has announced the winner of the 2023 Leah Prize, Gloria Majule's Culture Shock.  Majule's new play concerns two African students, Zahra from Tanzania and Hawi from Kenya, who start school in an Ivy League institution.

They are placed in Salama House, an all-black dorm and affinity space for black students. Faced with cultural, academic and economic challenges, Zahra and Hawi try to make it through Freshman Year, while facing the reality of what it means to be black in America. The play will have a public reading during Vassar College's Powerhouse Theater Season (June 25-July 30) on their campus in Poughkeepsie, NY on July 1. The reading will be directed by Shariffa Ali.

The Leah Ryan Fund also awards honorable mention citations to Carolina Đỗ's ĂN CHƠI: eat. play. rage. (A don't fuck with the weekend shift play) and to Daria Marinelli's Beautiful Blessed Child.

“Each year, it's always a privilege and an honor to remember Leah Ryan and her spirit by adding another strong theatrical voice to our growing list of winners," said board member Ed Cheetham. 

Gloria Majule is a playwright from Dodoma, Tanzania presently residing in Seattle, WA. She seeks to tell stories that bring multiple black voices together from across the world, and are accessible to black audiences no matter where they are. She writes plays about Africans and the African diaspora. Gloria is an inaugural recipient of Atlantic Theater Company's Judith Champion Launch Commission. Her plays have been developed at Great Plains Theatre Commons, A is For, Alliance Theatre, Westport Country Playhouse and Aye Defy. She has been in residency at New York Stage and Film and Stockton University. Gloria has taught Playwriting at Cornish College of the Arts, and has guest lectured at University of Washington and University Puget Sound. She graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a BA in Performing & Media Arts and Spanish, and holds an MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama.

Shariffa Chelimo Ali is an international creative leader committed to advancing radical change through the power of art and activism. Originally from Kenya and raised in South Africa, Shariffa has lectured and directed at NYU, Brooklyn College, Yale University, and Princeton University, productions including Eclipsed, Detroit '67, Intimate Apparel, and We Are Proud to Present, and an original new musical, We Were Everywhere. In 2020 Shariffa was named Artist in Residence at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the largest repertory theatre in the United States, where she helmed the world premiere of Karen Zacarías's The Copper Children. She has served as assistant director to her mentor Cynthia Nixon for Rasheeda Speaking, Steve (The New Group) and Motherstruck! (Culture Project). Education: BA with honors, Theatre and Performance, University of Cape Town, South Africa. In 2022 Shariffa was named Elizabeth M. Swayzee Artist in Residence at Miami University. www.shariffa.com

The Leah Ryan Fund began giving out its annual prize in 2010 to honor the memory of Leah Ryan, and to encourage and support the work of brilliant and unrecognized women, trans, and non-binary playwrights. It is the purpose of the prize to perpetuate the integrity, compassion, and creativity that Leah herself possessed and inspired in others.

Winners of The Leah playwriting prize receive a cash award, currently $5,000, and a public reading and summer workshop as part of the Powerhouse Theater Program at Vassar College. As hoped, the prize has been a springboard for winners who have subsequently won other competitions, have received full-staged productions of their work, and/or have gone on to successful careers in theater, TV, and film. https://leahryanfund.org