David A. Tucker II Wins ATC’s 2023 National Latine Playwrights Award
Arizona Theatre Company is delighted to announce the winner of the 2023 National Latine Playwrights Award. Chicano playwright, David A. Tucker II, has won the award for his black comedy, The Nude, for which he will receive $2500 and a professional workshop and a public reading of the play to launch a National Latine Playwrights Festival, slated for June 2024.
The Nude follows a struggling artist, his investment-savvy girlfriend, a rival painter, and an ambitious gallery owner as they find their lives and work intertwined in more ways than one in this dark art-world comedy. Max is an emerging painter who struggles to gain traction in the elite art world. His girlfriend, Stephanie, is a successful associate in a global investment firm that takes her everywhere but where she really wants to be. Ernst’s artistic labors-of-love adorn hotel lobbies and restaurant bathrooms when what he dreams of is an actual gallery show. And gallery owner, Marty, needs nothing more than to discover the Next Big Thing.
David A. Tucker II has had several plays developed at theaters across the nation. His theatrical works include Smoke (2018 O’Neill Theater Conference Finalist and 2018 AITAF Bridge Award Finalist), Veils, Persistence of Vision, Baghdad (about his experiences commanding a military unit in Iraq), Under the Skin and North Wind Blowin’ (Chicago Dramatists’ 2006 Many Voices Project).
Growing up in a Mexican-Anglo family, Tucker’s plays often explore collisions of race, culture and political systems. Since 2008, he has been teaching creative writing to wounded military veterans and their caregivers through the Writers Guild Initiative.
The National Latine Playwrights Award & Festival reading will take place on June 14 at Tempe Center for the Arts. For more information, click here.
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