This year’s prestigious Yale Drama Series Prize winner has some very local ties to Kentucky and the UK Markey Cancer Center. Leah Nanako Winkler was awarded the $100,000 David Charles Horn Prize for her play, “God Said This,” which explores the topic of mortality from various perspectives.
Nanako Winkler, who penned the play while sitting on a couch at UK Markey while her own mother was undergoing chemotherapy treatments, says she never imagined the play would win any awards, let alone one as prestigious as the Yale Drama Series Prize.
The work offers a witty, introspective look at five family members, each of whom is battling his or her own internal demons, and follows their journey to come together as they face their mother’s/wife’s/friend’s fight with cancer and possible death.
Winkler, who is from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington, Kentucky, says the play will have its world premier at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in April 2018 and will also be part of Off-Broadway at Primary Stages in New York during their 2018-2019 season.
Read the full article at Yale.edu.