UC San Diego Awards 2018 Gaffney Prize To Eliana Pipes For STAND AND WAIT

The UC San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance has announced the winner of the 2018 Dr. Floyd Gaffney National Playwriting Competition, Stand and Wait by Eliana Pipes. Eliana will be awarded a $1000 prize, and her play will receive a staged reading on Saturday, May 12 at 10 AM, at the Wagner Theater in the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre District on UC San Diego's campus.

The Gaffney Prize, now in its twelfth year, awards $1000 to the winning author along with travel and lodging to participate in the play's staged reading as part of the Wagner New Play Festival at UC San Diego.

About the play: Sparked by Paula Deen's perverse remarks of an Antebellum South themed wedding with "historically appropriate" staff, Stand and Wait follows a seasoned black actress Carla, and a naïve white actress Tracy, who make friends in an audition, only to be handed a script that caters to America's worst racial instincts. The event transcends to a plantation outside of space and time as Carla encounters ghosts of slaves and the legacy that's been haunting her.

The staged reading will be directed by Robert Castro and stage managed by Bryan P. Clements. The cast will feature Janet Fiki (Carla), Mary Rose Branick (Tracy), Brandon O'Sullivan (Mel), Assata Hefner (Yvonne), Amara Granderson (Lisa), Xavier Clark (Damian).

Eliana Pipes is a playwright, filmmaker and actor graduating from Columbia University with a B.A. in English and entering Boston University's MFA Playwriting Program. Recent work includes: Stiletto Envy (Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, The Fire this Time Festival) Isadora del Sol (KCACTF John Cauble Award). elianapipes.com.

Angie B. Jones was awarded "Honorable Mention" for her play The Great American Negro Experiment. An inspired satire with theme park traces of Disney's EPCOT Center, Angie B. Jones sets her play inside U.N.I.T.Y Theme Park's Black American Pavilion. Her madcap string of vignettes are imaginative and re-imaginative of an entire history of African Americans, with extended cameos from Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois.

Angie B. Jones is a playwright from Atlanta with a B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts. She was the recipient of the Lew Wasserman Scholarship and enters Yale's MFA playwriting program Fall 2018. Angie has worked at New Dramatists, Younger, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Fox Searchlight, and Jax Media. Works have been premiered at Horizon Theater, New York University, and University of Michigan. https://www.angiebjones.com/

Jurors for this year's award are Allan Havis, professor of theatre at UC San Diego, MFA playwright Dave Harris, and incoming MFA playwright Vivian Barnes. The Theatre & Dance Department wishes to thank the work of the jurors, the Dean of Arts and Humanities, and also the Gaffney family for lending Dr. Floyd Gaffney's name to this national event - recognizing Dr. Gaffney's achievement in African American theatre.

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