Pearl Cleage and David Greenspan have been named the 2025 recipients of the Legacy Playwrights Award. The honor recognizes established American playwrights for sustained influence on the industry in hopes of directing renewed attention to their body of work.
Cleage is an Atlanta-based writer who currently serves as distinguished artist in residence at the Alliance Theatre, and as Atlanta’s first Poet Laureate. She has also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild and the Paul Robeson Award from the Actor’s Equity Foundation. She has penned 15 plays, including Blues for An Alabama Sky, which recently concluded a run at London’s National Theatre; and Flyin’ West. Cleage's play Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous, is scheduled for a production at the Geffen Playhouse in 2026 under the direction of LaTanya Richardson Jackson. She is currently at work on a new play entitled Flying Fish & Folding Money.
“To be able to spend my life as a working playwright is a great blessing and an endless challenge. To be honored by my peers for doing the work I love is a true pleasure, and I'm just getting started good!,” said Cleage in a statement.
Actor and playwright Greenspan's honors include Guggenheim, Lortel, and Fox fellowships; Alpert, Lambda Literary, Helen Merrill Playwriting awards; a Ruthie; and six Obies. He has appeared in his plays Dead Mother, She Stoops to Comedy, Go Back to Where You Are, I’m Looking for Helen Twelvetrees, The Memory Motel, as well as his solo plays The Argument and The Myopia. He has also starred in solo renditions of Barry Conners’ comedy The Patsy, Eugene O’Neill’s six-hour drama Strange Interlude and Gertrude Stein’s experimental Four Saints in Three Acts; premieres and revivals, notably Terrence McNally’s Some Men, Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot, Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, Goethe’s Faust, three solo plays: Joey Merlo’s On Set With Theda Bara, Mona Pirnot’s I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan, and Jerry Lieblich’s without mirrors.
“Needless to say, receipt of this award was totally unanticipated, and I’m rather stunned to be a recipient. My stated goal as a playwright and actor is to entertain and engage audiences intellectually and emotionally. I expect this award will greatly support my efforts in doing so. I cannot adequately express my deep gratitude to the Dramatists Guild Foundation for this honor,” Greenspan said in a statement.
As part of their selection, both Cleage and Greenspan will receive a monetary grant, advocacy and financial incentives for professional productions of their work, the reissuing of previously published plays, programs to raise awareness for their body of work within the theatre community and in universities, and filmed interviews highlighting their careers.
Past recipients of the award include the late Ed Bullins, Carlyle Brown, Frank Chin, Constance Congdon, Migdalia Cruz, Philip Kan Gotanda, Cherríe Moraga, Milcha Sanchez-Scott, and Richard Wesley.
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