BROADWAY WORLD -- Esteemed American Playwrights Ed Bullins, Constance Congdon and Philip Kan Gotanda have been announced as the inaugural recipients of the Legacy Playwrights Initiative Awards. The winners will be recognized by their friends and peers, including Lou Bellamy, Oskar Eustis, David Henry Hwang, Tony Kushner, Phylicia Rashad and Paula Vogel, at the Dramatists Guild Foundation “Write in the Dark” virtual benefit on December 21, 2020.
The industry-wide Legacy Playwrights Initiative is a process of rediscovery and advocacy for important elder playwrights whose writing has fallen out of the public eye.
Ed Bullins is an African American playwright and author, who began his professional playwriting career began in 1965 with the production of “How Do You Do,” “Dialect Determinism (or The Rally)” and “Clara’s Ole Man” at the Firehouse Repertory Theatre in San Francisco. He later became the Resident Playwright and associate director at Robert Macbeth’s New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, New York.
Bullins also edited Black Theatre Magazine, published by the New Lafayette, and later directed the Writers’ Unit Playwrights Workshop for Joseph Papp at The Public Theatre and the Playwrights Workshop at Woodie King’s New Federal Theatre in New York City. He also served in the Cherry Lane Theater Mentor Project. Bullins earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Antioch College in 1989 and his Master of Fine Arts in playwriting from San Francisco State University.