YALE DRAMA SERIES

Unique in its Structure. Successful in its Reach.

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.

Judges

“To find the best emerging playwrights we went to the best established playwrights.”

John Donatich 

WINNERS

“One of the things the prize has proved in its short life is that there are plenty of good playwrights out there.”

David Hare

Published Plays

“It’s very important to have plays published as books because the printed copy reaches people who haven’t seen the play, who aren’t going to see the play, who will never see the play because they live in another country or something.”

Nicholas Wright