Playwriting student Amalia Oliva Rojas has been awarded an inaugural Hansberry Lilly Playwright Fellowship. The fellowship is an initiative inspired by Lorraine Hansberry, aiming to motivate women and nonbinary playwrights of color to continue her legacy, regardless of race, gender, or economic status.
This award, based on merit and financial need, seeks to confront financial inequities related to gender and identity while promoting equal representation in terms of race and gender in theatre. This year’s recipients were selected by a panel formed by Playwrights Lydia Diamond and Nikkole Salter.
Each fellow will receive a $25,000 stipend to use toward living-expenses during graduate studies.
“In over twenty years of teaching at institutions such as Columbia, Princeton and Yale, I can attest to the financial obstacles that have prevented generations of women of color from attending dramatic writing programs,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Associate Professor Lynn Nottage in a statement. “It is heartbreaking that there are important voices that go unheard, because the aspiring writers did not have the economic resources to invest in nurturing their craft. We at The Lillys want to change that. The Hansberry Lilly Playwright Fellowship is a pathway for talented women of color who thought that graduate school, and a career in writing, was beyond their reach.”
In this inaugural year, all women and nonbinary writers of color newly or currently enrolled in the graduate playwriting programs at Brooklyn College, Brown University, Columbia University, Juilliard, Northwestern University, NYU-Tisch School of the Arts, University of California San Diego, and Yale University were encouraged to apply for this fellowship. Danielle Stagger, a student from Yale University, will join Rojas as one of the first recipients of the Hansberry Lilly Playwright Fellowship.
Amalia Oliva Rojas is a Mexican poet, performer, and theatre “artivist” raised and based in Nueva York. She is a proud alumnus of the Vassar College Powerhouse Theater Apprentice Program, CUNY Lehman College. Her plays include Tonantzin On the 7 Train, A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Succeed in the Myth-Making Business (Lehman College), How to Melt ICE (or How the Coyote fell in love with the lizard who was really a butterfly) (New York Women’s Fund Grant, New Perspectives Theatre Company and Boundless Theater Company), and In The Bronx Brown Girls Can See Stars Too (Titan Theatre Company Future Classics Festival).
