SMU’s Jonathan Norton ’11 Wins Theatre Critics’ Osborn New Play Award

Jonathan Norton ’11 has won the 2016 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award for an emerging playwright from the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA). The award will be presented at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville on April 9.

The Osborn Award recognizes Norton’s “Mississippi Goddamn,” which premiered in February 2015 at the South Dallas Cultural Center in a production directed by Vickie Washington.
Norton’s play is also a finalist for the 2016 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, the winner of which will be announced at the festival.
An inaugural member of the Dallas Playwrights Workshop, Norton has had plays developed or produced by PlayPenn, The Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, TeCo Theatrical Productions, African-American Repertory Theater and more. Norton earned a master of liberal studies degree from the University in 2011 and is an SMU staff member.
In “Mississippi Goddamn,” Norton takes us to the house next door to that of civil rights leader Medgar Evers and offers a drama about a family making tough decisions in a tumultuous time.
Among the comments by the ACTCA New Play Committee panelists:
“Venal haters and courageous civil rights leaders have been the subjects of many a film and play, but this piece tackles the less dramatized and understood reality of those caught in the crossfire.”
“He may have used Nina Simone’s song as his title, but the play’s content isn’t borrowed at all.” The “fast-moving, dramatic and revelatory” play with a “truly explosive, molten core” contains “nothing PC or sentimental.” It has “a raw quality that actually benefits the tense ‘desperate hours’ scenario of neighbors and families divided by the insidious pressures of racism.”
“The conflicts explored here are usually left out when theater looks at such revered figures as Medgar Evers,” but Norton offers “a very gripping, very human drama on every page.”
“Norton’s research into that story paid off, and he emerged with a show that sparks conversation.”
ATCA’s Osborn Award is designed to recognize the work of an author who has not yet achieved national stature. The award was established in 1993 to honor the memory of Theatre Communications Group and American Theatre play editor M. Elizabeth Osborn. It carries a $1,000 prize, funded by the Foundation of the American Theatre Critics Association.
The American Theatre Critics Association was founded in 1974 and works to raise critical standards and public awareness of critics’ functions and responsibilities. The only national association of professional theater critics, it has several hundred members who work for newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations and websites across the United States. ATCA is also a national section of the International Association of Theatre Critics, a UNESCO-affiliated organization that sponsors seminars and congresses worldwide.