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We are proud to announce the recipient of the 2025-26 Rella Lossy Award. The Rella Lossy Award honors the memory of Rella Lossy, a lifelong champion of the American theatre and playwriting, by honoring the best new full-length script of a play by an emerging playwright that will premiere in Alameda County, Contra Costa County, Marin County, Napa County, San Francisco County, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, Solano County, or Sonoma County in the coming year.

Running After Shadows

by Vincent Terrell Durham
Produced by City Lights Theater Company of San Jose
January 15 – February 8, 2026

In Running After Shadows by Vincent Terrell Durham, home chef Morgan Collins opens a package containing his father’s ashes during his latest live video podcast. Over the next 75 minutes, Morgan tells viewers about his mostly-absent father and dismissive and abusive stepfather; his patient yet realistic mother; his uncles, aunts and cousins; coming out as gay; and his childhood interactions with a sassy, insightful Walmart cashier.  One actor plays all the parts in a story of heartache and discovery that leads, ultimately, to redemption and forgiveness.  Running After Shadows was commissioned by City Lights Theater Company of San José.

headshot of Vincent Terrell Durham

An LA-based playwright, Vincent Terrell Durham is a Lanford Wilson Award nominee and was a featured writer in the 16th annual ABC Discovers New York Talent Showcase. His monologue “A Park for Children to Pretend In” was published in 08:46 Fresh Perspectives, A Collection of Monologues by Black Playwrights. He has worked with the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s new play program, Words Cubed, and received commissions from PlayGround San Francisco/Planet Earth Arts and City Lights Theater Company. A proud gay man of color, Vincent writes to contribute to the legacy of Black theatremakers and to honor his family of vibrant storytellers.

2025 Rella Lossy Award Panelists

Karina Gutierrez (She/Her) is a Bay Area-based director, dramaturg, and scholar. She is passionate about supporting new play development, fostering local artists, and creating welcoming, equitable, and accessible theatre spaces and classrooms. She considers theatre a powerful space for social change and the mending, healing, and restoring of communities. As a director and dramaturg, Karina has had the pleasure of working with Bay Area Children’s Theatre, BRAVA, Magic Theatre, Crowded Fire, Huntington Theatre, Marin Theatre, PlayGround, Playwright’s Foundation, Shotgun Players, Stanford University, TheatreFirst, Town Hall Theatre, UC Berkeley, West Edge Opera, and Word for Word. She is additionally a member of the Latinx Theatre Commons Steering Committee, a board member at Theatre Bay Area and Crowded Fire Theatre. Karina received her Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from Stanford University, where she was awarded the Carl Weber Prize for integration of Creative Practice and Scholarly Research. Her scholarship concentrates on the intersection of politics and performance, specifically how digital interventions, institutionalization efforts, and historical narrative affect the development and sustainability of social and politically engaged performance companies and collectives in the Americas. She is currently a professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (pronouns: he-him / they-them / Nick) is a third-culture queer, non-binary trans Tanzanian-American. Nick’s plays include: Silence Is A Sound; the comedy Cock Tales for Christmas; 37, a Black lesbian duet set in prison; S.T.A.R: Marsha P. Johnson; queer trilogy bathed in queer African fantasia Waafrika 123; A Queerly Scripted Tragic Rise to African Fantasia; QTPOC trans masculine THEY/THEM/THEIRS; the queer apocalyptic Home is the AfterLife; Blueprint for an African Lesbian; SH/Ero; Asymmetrical We; Brotherly Love; Trailer Park Tundra; Once A Man Always A Man; Mama Afrika; Queering MacBeth; Life Is About the Kill; That Day God Visits You; Ata; To Dyke Trans; Gayze; Good Grief; Pence At The Border and many more. Residencies include: Nationally recognized and nominated Resident Playwright Initiative with Playwrights’ Foundation (San Francisco, CA 2019-2023); Resilience and Development (R&D) Writers’ Lab with Crowded Fire Theater Company in San Francisco (2017-2018); New York City’s EWG (Emerging Writers’ Group) at the Public Theater sponsored by Time Warner Co.; New York City’s Groundbreakers Group, Djerassi Artist Residency in Northern California, Freedom Train Productions, Ragged Wing Ensemble and more. Nick is a 2018 finalist for Africa’s Gerald Kraak Award; a two-time recipient of the Creativity Fund issued by the Public Theater and Time Warner, and a 2017 Spring grantee of a Theatre Bay Area (TBA) Individual Artist Cash grant. Nick graduated Magna Cum Laude at Columbia University in New York City for undergraduate and completed an MFA at Columbia University as a Point Scholar, the nation’s largest LGBTQIA scholarship fund, and was awarded a Columbia University Fellowship for theater at the same time.  Nick attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop thanks to a Norman Felton Fellowship. Nick’s plays have been produced in New York City, Berkeley, San Francisco, Wisconsin, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa and most recently in Croatia for 2025 Queer Zagreb.

Lauren Yee is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter based in New York City who loves her hometown of San Francisco. Prior to the pandemic, Lauren was named by American Theatre Magazine as the second-most produced playwright of that upcoming season. Her play with music Cambodian Rock Band (with music by Dengue Fever and others) had its New York premiere at Signature, with additional productions at South Coast Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, East West Players, and others. Her play The Great Leap was produced at the Denver Center, Steppenwolf, Seattle Repertory, Atlantic Theatre, the Guthrie Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, and others. Honors include the Doris Duke Artists Award, Whiting Award, Steinberg/ATCA Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters literature award, Horton Foote Prize, Kesselring Prize, and a Hodder Fellowship. She’s also a New Dramatists member and an alum of Playwrights Realm and Ma-Yi Theatre. TV credits: Pachinko (Apple), Interior Chinatown (Hulu), Billions (Showtime), Clipped (FX), Soundtrack (Netflix). BA: Yale. MFA: UCSD. www.laurenyee.com

Learn more about the Rella Lossy Award