Grill & Chowder Win the Inaugural Relentless Musical Award

1/11/2023 6:20pm


The American Playwriting Foundation (David Bar Katz, Founding Artistic Director) and Building for the Arts (David J Roberts, President) have announced that Shayok Misha Chowdhury and Laura Grill Jaye, professionally known as Grill and Chowder, have won the Relentless Musical Award for their new musical "How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia."  As the creators of the winning submission, Grill and Chowder will receive $65,000 as well as opportunities to have How the White Girl… developed at various theatrical institutions, including a series of staged readings at Theatre Row. The annual Relentless Award, created in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman, is presented this year to a musical submission in honor of Adam Schlesinger, an Academy & Tony-nominated and Emmy & Grammy-winning songwriter who passed away from COVID-19 in 2020. Schlesinger had served as an artistic advisor during the creation of the Relentless Award in 2015. In "How the White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia," a White Girl's smooth white life in Suburbia is interrupted by an unexpected scar on her shoulder. A Brown Spot. In this musical automythography, told through a series of Kipling-esque creation myths, Grill and Chowder wade through a swamp of discarded tamagotchis, Abercrombie clippings, and soggy pogs in search of a history that holds them, even when they’d rather it let them go. The winner and finalists of the Relentless Musical Award were selected by a panel of judges including Rachel Bloom, James Iha, Lynn Nottage, Thomas Bradshaw, David Javerbaum , Sam Hollander, Brontez Purnell and Stephin Merrit. The 2022 Relentless Musical Award Selection Committee has also recognized three finalists: "Hills On Fire" by Joe Stevens and Keaton Wooden; "Shoot for the Moon" by David Gomez and John-Michael Lyles; and "XY" by Oliver Houser. For more information, please visit americanplaywritingfoundation.org/the-relentless-award. Press contact: The Press Room NYC (212/763-7724)...