Department of Theatre Announces 2023 Kernodle New Play Winner Alexa Derman

Playwright Alexa Derman, winner of the 2023 Kernodle New Play Award.

The Department of Theatre announces The Creature by playwright Alexa Derman as winner of the 2023 Kernodle New Play Award.

The national contest, named in honor of U of A theatre historian George Kernodle, was established in 1986 and received 15-plus submissions from playwrights across the country in the 2023 cycle. All submissions are reviewed by a reading committee including graduate students and faculty, who make final selections for the annual award.

Inventive, disturbing and slippery to summarize, The Creature follows a speculative scientist’s laboratory creation of a “thing…sublimely incomparable, wholly itself.” The play, which pushes the bounds of traditional theatrical narrative, speeds through time and through the creature’s life span, contemplating themes of kinship, reproduction, bodily autonomy, the generative and destructive possibility of scientific exploration and human dignity.

As she wrote the play, Derman says she discovered it created conversations “about the uncanny sensation of having a body capable of growing other bodies” and how that opens up the prospect of “finding kinship in a world that feels like it’s ending.” Given the current cultural conversations around bodily autonomy, associate professor John Walch, director of Kernodle New Play Award, says, “The reading committee found the play both timely and timeless, filled with humor and horror, simultaneously normal and completely wild. The bold dichotomies the playwright employs are what made the play stand out.”

The Kernodle New Play Award comes with a cash award, the possibility of production of the script, as well as potential guest artist mentorships to further work with students in the Department of Theatre.

The Play
Soon. A biomedically engineered creature made to create supplemental human organs is grown in the body of a graduate student. Soon becomes later. Later becomes lifetimes. The Creature is a play about speculative research, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, standards of cosmic care and every wild thing.

The Playwright
Alexa Derman writes adventurous plays, which include The Creature (Runner-up, Princess Grace/New Dramatists; Finalist, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference), Psychopsychotic (Honorable Mention, Relentless Award), Girlish (Fresh Ink), Zionista Rising (Winner, Jewish Plays Project National Competition) and I’ll Be in My Hanukkah Palace (sold-out at Ars Nova ANT Fest). Her work has been developed and supported by the Playwrights Center, Orchard Project, Clubbed Thumb, Ars Nova, Cutting Ball, Fresh Ground Pepper, Hedgebrook and Ragdale. She’s been twice nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn and the L Arnold Weissberger prize. Derman is currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club via the Sloan Foundation and was recently a staff writer on a Netflix series. She earned her BA from Yale in women’s, gender and sexuality studies; and her MFA from Brown, where she studied under Julia Jarcho. alexaderman.com

About the Department of Theatre: The University of Arkansas Department of Theatre has been providing exciting and affordable theatre for more than 60 years. The department combines a first-rate theatrical education full of hands-on experience with a wide selection of titles to challenge students and the community. The department offers the Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre, a broad spectrum program in the context of a liberal arts education, and the Master of Fine Arts degree in six concentrations: Acting, Directing, Playwriting, Costume Design, Scene Design and Lighting Design. Classes at both undergraduate and graduate levels are focused on providing a strong, professional orientation to theatre performance and technology in conjunction with appropriate research-based coursework in theatre history, dramatic literature and dramatic criticism.

This story also appeared in the University of Arkansas News publication.