BLUE INK AWARD for playwriting

The nationally-renowned Blue Ink Award for playwriting was created in 2010 to support new work. Since inception, we’ve named 14 Award winners, 148 finalists, and 233 semi-finalists.  Nearly $10,000 in cash and prizes will be distributed to playwrights in 2024.

Each year American Blues Theater accepts worldwide submissions of original, unpublished full-length plays. The winning play will be selected by Executive Artistic Director Gwendolyn Whiteside and the theater’s Ensemble. The 2024 winning playwright receives a monetary prize of $3,000. Cash prizes are awarded to finalists and semi-finalists too.  All proceeds of the administrative fee are distributed for playwrights’ cash prizes.

2025 BLUE INK AWARD RULES (coming in July).

Send any questions to Associate Artistic Director Elyse Dolan – ElyseD@AmericanBluesTheater.com.

2025 Semi-finalists, finalists, and the award winner will be notified by March 2025.

2024 BLUE INK AWARD to KEN URBAN

The Conquered

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Featured Finalists: Brittany Fisher (Your Regularly Scheduled Programming), Nick Malakhow (Grit), Sharifa Yasmin (The Devils Between Us).

Finalists: Doc Andersen-Bloomfield (Jus’ Sayin’, Jus’ Sayin’), Rae Binstock (Relentless), Yussef El Guindi (Wife of Headless Man Investigates Her Own Disappearance), Gina Femia (HURRICANE(S)), Dominic Finocchiaro (how it feels to fall from the sky), Alyssa Haddad-Chin (The Ancestry Dot Com Play), Rachel Lynett (Missing Socks and a Line of Coke (or The Baby Fever Play)), Wendy MacLeod (Posterity), Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj (with supplemental dialogue and dramaturgy by Adam Mace) (Sweet Lorraine), Matthew Paul Olmos (immorality may well be imagined), Audley Puglisi (Lucky Bird), Nia Akilah Robinson (A Clubbing Subculture; The Promoter House), Omer Abbas Salem (Modern Women), Caridad Svich (Kora K.), R. Eric Thomas (Humble Yourself!), LaDarrion Williams (The Odyssey of Tyrell James).

Semi-finalists: Amanda L. Andrei (Helicopter Typhoon Carabao! Or, To Survive an Apocalypse Now), Ian August (All the Emilies in All the Universes), Cris Eli Blak (Anonymous Skin), Barbara Blatner (Jane, Queen’s Foole), Toccara Castleman (Maybe a Mexican), Douglas Chang (Minor Bird), Xavier Clark (ICONS), Spenser Davis (A Million Tiny Pieces), Rudi Goblen (Green Suga Bloos), Morgan Gould (All the Stupid Bitches), Katherine Gwynn (All I Wanna Do Is Be Pretty Like You), Jordan Elizabeth Henry (HOWLING: a fairy tale), Kristin Idaszak (Last Ascent), Jessica Kahkoska (In Her Bones), M.J. Kang (Blyth Visitations), Alan Kilpatrick (Scorpio’s Tail), Alex Lubischer (You Deserve to Be Here), Zizi Majid (The Rejects), Gloria Majule (My Father was Shot in the Back of the Head), Forest Malley (French Boy Cigarettes), Eric Marlin (inside you, a cry), Karissa Murrell Myers (Black Bear Island), Esmé Maria Ng (FISH MEAT), Darcy Parker Bruce (the wolf you feed), Nicholas Pilapil (God Will Do The Rest), Christina Pumariega (VOS!), Iraisa Ann Reilly (Miss America Pretty), Jesús I. Valles (Spread), Liba Vaynberg (Romance Languages), P.C. Verrone (PIONEER).

Read about the 2024 BLUE INK AWARD WINNER, FINALISTS, & SEMI-FINALISTS.

PREVIOUS BLUE INK AWARD WINNERS

2023 – Things With Friends by Kristoffer Diaz
2022 – The Reapers on Woodbrook Avenue by Mardee Bennett
2021 – Refugee Rhapsody by Yussef El Guindi
2020 – Recent Unsettling Events by Andrea Stolowitz
2019 – Alma by Benjamin Benne | world premiere American Blues Theater, Chicago, 2022; Center Theater Group, L.A., 2022
2018 – Welcome to Matteson! by Inda Craig-Galván | world premiere New Jersey Repertory Company, 2023; Congo Square Theatre, Chicago, 2023.
2017 – Hype Man by Idris Goodwin | world premiere Company One, Boston, 2018
2016 – The Wind and the Breeze by Nathan Alan Davis | world premiere Cygnet Theatre, San Diego, 2018
2015 – Other Than Honorable by Jamie Pachino | world premiere Geva Theatre Center, NY, 2017
2014 – Comden Mall Community Activists by Douglas Post
2013 – Graveyard of Empires by Elaine Romero | world premiere 16th Street Theater, Chicago, 2015
2012 – American Myth by Christina Telesca | world premiere American Blues Theater, Chicago, 2014
2011 – American Home by Stephanie Walker | world premiere, Pasadena, CA, 2017

THE RIPPED FESTIVAL

Chicago’s Original – Est. 2009

Now in its 16th year, our annual Ripped Festival is a 30-day celebration of short plays and playwrights. We’ve presented 22 events and utilized 650+ artists that feature scripts ripped from today’s headlines.

HISTORY – Our Ripped: The Living Newspaper Project began in 2009 with a series of staged readings of short plays based on the 1930s WPA era program “The Living Newspaper” and Federal Writers’ Project, enabling artists such as Ralph Ellison, Susan Glaspell, Zora Neale Hurston, Eugene O’Neill, Studs Terkel, and Richard Wright to launch their careers. In 2013, we expanded our staged readings into the sold-out, one-night-only, annual event – The Ripped Festival. All proceeds of these annual events benefit our free arts education programs. Due to the 2020-2021 pandemic and industry shutdown of live events, we presented The Ripped Festival as an online library, featuring 30 short plays throughout the month of June. Selected scripts were used during a theater course at the University of California – Berkeley. Due to incredible response, our month long celebration of playwrights and short plays continue.

2023 THE RIPPED FESTIVAL ONLINE LIBRARY
2022 THE RIPPED FESTIVAL ONLINE LIBRARY
2021 THE RIPPED FESTIVAL ONLINE LIBRARY