They’re the toast of Broadway — and beyond.
Hunter alumni have claimed a raft of top theatre awards this season, further cementing the stellar reputation of the Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program.
- Hunter adjunct instructor Phillip Christian Smith MFA ’23 won the prestigious 2026 Kleban Prize for Musical Theater.
- Page 73, an Off-Broadway company, gave its playwriting fellowship, its top award, to Adin Lenahan MFA ’19.
- Jesse Jae Hoon MFA ’22 and Sam Walsh MFA ’24 will have work featured in the upcoming Washington, D.C., theatre festival New Stages, New Pages, produced by Studio Theatre.
- MFA Playwriting student Nora Brigid Monahan ’26 is a finalist for the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition and will have her play workshopped at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta next year.
“I am beyond thrilled for each of these writers!” said Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program Director Christine Scarfuto. “They each are incredibly talented, hard-working, and have shown an inspiring commitment to their craft. It’s an honor to see them receive these prestigious awards recognizing their work. They are each a true testament to our program and to Hunter College.”
The $100,000 Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre, named for the late lyricist of A Chorus Line, Edward Kleban, was established in 1988 as a way of supporting early career librettists and lyricists rather than honoring any specific work.
“Kleban Prize winners are going to define the art form for years to come,” said Kleban Foundation President Richard Maltby, Jr.
Smith, who got an MFA in acting from Yale School of Drama before earning his Hunter degree, certainly is doing that. Writing primarily about the Black and Queer experience, Smith is a resident member of New Dramatists 2023-2030, a 2026 Sloan Commission Playwright at Ensemble Studio Theater, a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow, a Fire This Time Festival Playwright, a Fresh Ground Pepper Playground Playgroup member, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee, a Roe Green Commission Playwright with Cleveland Playhouse, and a Playwrights Realm and Lambda Literary Fellow. He teaches Playwriting 1 and 2 at Hunter.
If he seems to be burning the candle at both ends, he is doing that, too. In 2017 he underwent a stem-cell transplant for a long-brewing cancer. He calls his journey “a story of resilience.”
Smith said he was honored and excited to receive the Kleban Award, which will be presented on February 2 at the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.
As Smith tells it, he had never written a musical before he got to Hunter, but in his first semester, with an assignment to adapt an ancient Greek play, he wrote Some Charter School Presents The Medea. Now he and four classmates who workshopped his musical have formed a theatre company, The Omnivores. Meanwhile, he and co-composer Ryan Blihovde are working on two songs from it to present at the Kleban Awards.
Lenahan specializes in dark comedy, fantasy, melodrama, and satire and has had works staged at Abrons Art Center, Ars Nova, The Brick, Dixon Place, Culture Lab LIC, Judson Memorial Church, The Kraine, The New Ohio, The Tank, Theater for the New City, and Tom Noonan’s Paradise Factory. The Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship includes a $20,000 award, $10,000 toward the development of a new play, and an upcoming production at the Off-Broadway company.
Hoon is a former winner of the Terrence McNally Award. Hoon’s play is Do You Think I'm Annoying?, a coming-of-age drama following two international adoptees, while Walsh’s is the stranger, about an older man who has had trouble forming relationships.
Monahan created and starred in the cult-hit solo musical DIVA: Live From Hell, which has been performed around the world.
About the Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program
The Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program at Hunter College is a highly selective, rigorous, and affordable two-year playwriting program that has proved itself as an incubator of the nation’s top talent by seeking writers who challenge assumptions about what theatre is and will become.
