Jay Stull '20 Named Finalist in the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition

Playwriting Alumnus Jay Stull ’20 was recently named a finalist for the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition for his play, The Singularity Play.

The national competition is one of a kind in that it is dedicated to transitioning student playwrights to the realm of professional theatre. From a pool of applicants from the leading MFA graduate programs in the US, only four finalists are selected, among whom one is named as the competition’s winner. Matthew Libby from MFA program at NYU Tisch was announced as the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition winner for the 2020/21 year for his play, Data.

Stull’s The Singularity Play takes place in an unused room at the Google offices in Manhattan where a theater troupe has gathered to rehearse a new play written by an advanced AI named "Denise." In an art that relies so substantially upon our human-ness, the play explores questions like, what does it mean to cede the stage to artificial intelligence? And, who are we when reflected by the intelligence we’ve created?

As a finalist, Stull will receive development opportunities for his play, including staged readings with industry professionals. Past winners of the competition include Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue inspired the 2016 Academy Award-winning film for Best Picture, Moonlight (dir. Jenkins), Kenneth Lin, a writer for the Netflix hit series House of Cards, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist Meg Miroshnik who wrote The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, among many others.

Stull, along with the other finalists, had his play read this week as part of the Festival of New Works. The performance reading of The Singularity Play took place virtually on Wednesday, May 19, 2021 and was directed by fellow Theatre Program alumnus Keenan Tyler Oliphant ’20.

Read more about the Festival of New Works here.

Jay Stull is a playwright, director, and teacher. His plays include This is What You Shall Do (Semi-finalist for the Clubbed Thumb Biennial), Undone (Winner of Columbia@Roundabout Prize), Antarabhava (Barn Arts Residency), Streepshow! (produced by The Tank at The Connelly Theater; Ars Nova’s ANTFest; Dixon Place’s HOT! Fest), among others. He is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab, The Civilians R&D Group, and the Clubbed Thumb Early Career Directing Fellowship, as well as a founding member of the theater company Third Person, a group of improvisational storytellers who invent new plays in the moment. Recently, he was the artist-in-residence and visiting professor in the Theater, Dance, and Media concentration at Harvard College in the fall of 2020.

Keenan Tyler Oliphant is a theatre-maker and director from Cape Town, South Africa. He is a founding member of Mixing Bowl Productions, an underground music theatre company which focuses on the promotion of alternate and contemporary music theatre works. As Artistic Director he has produced and directed premier devised pieces In-between and Private Parts at the South African National Arts Festival. Since relocating, Oliphant has directed collaborative pieces at festivals including Dixon Place’s Hot Fest, Samuel French Off- Off Broadway Festival, and The International Human Rights Arts Festival. He was a part of the New Ohio Producers Club 2020 and a member of the Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship 2020/21.