David Yee (photo by Dahlia Katz)
Playwright David Yee wins 2023 Siminovitch Prize
Published: March 21, 2024
David Yee, a playwright who teaches at the University of Toronto Mississauga, , Canada鈥檚 highest valued theatre award.
The lucrative prize is awarded annually to a mid-career professional artist whose groundbreaking work significantly contributes to advancing the art form. It is named after playwright Elinore Siminovitch and Emeritus Lou Siminovitch.
The Siminovitch laureate receives $75,000 and the opportunity to select an up-and-coming artist to receive a $25,000 prot茅g茅 prize. Yee, co-founding artistic director of fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company, selected Julie Phan, Toronto writer-performer and arts leader.
鈥淚 tell my students that there will come a time in the process of creating a play where you must relinquish control to the play itself 鈥 when the play will start to tell you what it wants to be,鈥 Yee said in his acceptance speech. 鈥淭his is what writing has taught me: how to listen to something greater than myself. Not just as a way to create, but as a way to live in the world.鈥
Yee, who studied theatre and drama studies at U of T Mississauga and teaches playwriting at the university, won the in 2015.
about the infamous Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, featuring fourth-year students from the Theatre and Drama Studies program offered jointly by U of T Mississauga and Sheridan College.
