Point Park University graduate Stephanie Kyung Sun Walters has won the 2022 Terrence McNally Award in playwriting for Acetone Wishes and Plexiglass Dreams.
Philadelphian Walters (Class of ‘22) received her Master of Fine Arts in the screenwriting and playwriting program at Point Park University. Acetone Wishes and Plexiglass Dreams is centered around the character Celina, a Korean/Asian American, who has moved home to Philadelphia’s Koreatown to take over the neighborhood beauty salon.
“I got tired of waiting for opportunities for the Asian American and Pacific community, and so I began to write,” Walters said in a statement via Point Park. “I wrote for my friends’ strengths, for my mother’s stories to live on and for a community that is often left voiceless. I wanted that voice to be loud and unapologetically so.”
In addition to playwriting, Walters is also a Barrymore-nominated actor and teaching artist currently based in Philadelphia. She is an alum of InterAct Theatre Core Playwright, a current American Theatre Group PlayLab artist, and serves as the lead artist on the Philly Asian Performing Artists’ Playwrights Project. Her play Half of Chopsticks was a finalist for both the 2021 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and Seven Devils New Plays Conference, and received a stage reading at the inaugural Boise Contemporary Theatre BIPOC Playwrights Festival.In 2022, the Terrence McNally Award-winning playwright receives a cash award of $5,000 and development at Philadelphia Theatre Company, including readings as well as administrative and dramaturgical support. Acetone Wishes and Plexiglass Dreams will be at the Great Plains Theatre Conference this summer.
Categories: Arts and Ideas
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