PITTSFIELD, MASS.: Barrington Stage Company has announced the winners of their 2021 Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award. The Grand Prize winner is Daniella De Jesús for her play Get Your Pink Hands Off Me Sucka and Give Me Back, a dark comedy about colonization. De Jesús will receive $25,000 and a digital reading, with the possibility of a full production at Barrington Stage in the future. 

Additionally, $5,000 prizes will go to Miki Kim for After the Fall and to Laura Winters for Just the Melody. Both plays will also receive staged readings at Barrington Stage.

“It’s crucial to all of us at Barrington Stage to help develop new voices and new plays,” said founding artistic director Julianne Boyd in a statement. “We look forward to the readings of the winning plays and hearing more from these exciting and promising talents.” 

Finalists include Bleu Beckford-Burrell’s Lyons Pride, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen’s Flood, Steph Del Rosso’s You’re Crazy, Laura Jacqmin’s Campaign, Keyanna Khatiblou’s 2020: a going away party play, and Winter Miller’s Spare Rib. 

De Jesús is a Brooklyn-based actor and writer whose work has been seen at the Public Theater and the New Group Off Stage. She is an alum of the Public’s Emerging Writers Group, and her play Mambo Sauce was a semi-finalist for Clubbed Thumb’s 2018 commission. Get Your Pink Hands Off Me Sucka and Give Me Back follows Solandra, a Dominican American woman who is transported back to 1492 Spain, and Anacaona, a woman who prophesizes the invasion of Hispaniola.