Mission
The David Charles Horn Foundation seeks to invigorate contemporary theater by discovering and celebrating compelling new voices in playwriting through its founding and support of the Yale Drama Series Prize. The Foundation was established in 2003, by Francine Horn, in loving memory of her late husband and business partner, David Charles Horn, a British-born, American citizen, who in his day was not only an internationally sought-after advertising creative director and copywriter, but also a successful publishing entrepreneur. Although his gift for words enabled the couple to live a life full of travel, culture, and beauty, David did not live long enough to realize his long-held dream of seeing his literary work in print. Through this competition the Foundation endeavors to honor David’s unfulfilled dream by publishing the winning work of an emerging playwright as part of the now eminent Yale Drama Series produced by Yale University Press.
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YALE DRAMA SERIES
Unusual in its openness, the Yale Drama Series Prize annually invites submissions of original, full-length, English-language plays by emerging dramatists from across the globe. Since its launch in 2006, there have been more than 19,000 submissions from 116 countries. An acclaimed American or British playwright serves as judge for a two-year tenure, and appoints readers to blindly sift through as many as two thousand submissions, culling them to a more manageable number, typically between 30 and 50 plays, to be read by the distinguished judge, who then chooses a winner, without any knowledge of the author. In addition to the publication of the winner, a rarity for an unknown work, the play is given a professional staged reading at a prestigious venue, and the playwright receives the David Charles Horn Award of $10,000.
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PUBLISHED PLAYS
“Plays close. Books don’t.
Edward Albee
Plays don’t get published terribly often, except in acting editions.”
GALLERY
