She may be an accidental playwright, but Morgan McGuire MFA ’25 promises to have a big impact on the theatre.
When McGuire was a young actor fresh out of college, she joined a fledgling New York City theatre company that couldn’t afford to license plays. So, members started writing their own.
“I was less than enthusiastic about the idea, but when I began to think about it, I realized that acting and writing come from the same creative impulse, and that writing was the more immediate outlet,” she said.
Now she has won the Lanford Wilson Playwriting Award, a prestigious honor given by the Dramatist Guild to an early career playwright who produces innovative work in the spirit of the late Wilson, who was known for the immense love and respect he gave his motley characters.
The award showcases Hunter’s commitment to fulfilling its role as an anchor institution, providing high-impact opportunities for diverse, young changemakers. The honor represents the second consecutive year and the fourth time in five years that a Hunter MFA Playwriting graduate or student has won the Wilson Award. Minna Lee ’24 won it last year, while Charly Evon Simpson ’17 won it in 2019 and Mariam Bazeed ’18 in 2021.
Hunter’s Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program 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.
“Morgan has had a varied life in the theater and brings those experiences into her writing,” said Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program Director Christine Scarfuto. “She’s a thrilling writer with an intuitive sense of theatricality. She is deeply deserving of this award, and we are so excited for her.”
McGuire, who describes herself as “a Black playwright, actor, and theatre-maker from the American West,” drew early accolades for her writing. Her debut play, The Red Room, was a New Yorker Critics’ Pick. Her play In the Cotton, about a hate crime on a college campus, was commissioned by The Farm Theater for its College Collaboration Project and went on to win The Kennedy Center’s David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award.
McGuire studied acting at Marymount Manhattan College and has held playwriting residencies at several New York City companies. Her plays are known for their simmering rage, dark humor, and delight in the joy and terror of life.
“My characters’ personal and political lives collide in unexpected ways,” Mcguire said. “There’s a lot of drama to be mined in that.”
