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The Jerry Kaufman Award in Playwriting was established in 2007 by Carol Goldberg to honor her brother, Jerry Kaufman, playwright, publicist and lover of the arts. This award honors American Renaissance Theater playwrights. It is awarded on the basis of excellence in writing full-length work or shorter pieces for the theater that have been developed and presented in the Company’s workshops and represent the high artistic standards of the workshop. Funds that accompany the awards are to be used by the playwright to further his or her artistic endeavors. Mr. Kaufman loved the craft of playwriting and gave generously of his own talent and energies to the American Renaissance Theater Company. The Jerry Kaufman Award in Playwriting continues the important and selfless work that he pursued so passionately during his life and insures that his spirit will continue to inspire the works of future playwrights.

ABOUT JERRY KAUFMAN

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Liz Perry and Jerry Kaufman in the Rotunda of the US Capital, June 1996
Jerry Kaufman devoted his life to theater arts and the elevation of the dramatist. He is remembered for his indefatigable good humor and relentless energy in promoting theater artists. Having enjoyed a busy career in public relations, along with writing for radio and television, Mr. Kaufman joined the American Renaissance Theater Company as a playwright. A prolific writer, he developed a list of works and his plays were included in many competitions and festivals including the Virginia Beach Festival, the 63rd Street Performers, Riant Theater and the Dramatists Forum. In addition to publicizing other playwrights, he championed theater organizations such as the Henry Street Settlement and the work of important authors like Rachel Chenchinsky Roth whose holocaust memoir Here There is No Why found a strong audience thanks to his efforts. He went to great lengths to promote Sunflower, a play about the life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leading figure of the women’s suffrage movement, written by ARTC co-founder, Elizabeth Perry. Pursuing all channels to get the show off the ground, he contacted the Elizabeth Cady Stanton estate, the Johnstown Historical Society, and the National Museum of Women’s History, all publicity channels he had relationships with. He was endlessly diligent in making sure the play got seen and personally escorted Mrs. Stanton’s great great granddaughter, Coline Jenkens Sahlin, to a performance of the play at the New Dramatists. He then brought the museum founders to a production of Sunflower in New York. As a consequence, Ms. Perry was asked to deliver Stanton’s famous “Declaration” at the Dedication of the Suffrage Statue in the Rotunda of the US Capital.
Jerry Kaufman,
The Idea Man
by Elizabeth Perry
A paragraph you say
Is it possible
A paragraph about Jerry?
Is that possible?
This man who dreams in sagas?
Well, he’d say, I’m an Idea Man

Endless spinning, sculpting, supposing…
Ideas, imaginings, preposterous,
Presumptuous, unrestrained
You, Jerry, a paragraph?
How do you contain
An Idea Man

The tumult of thought
Here’s a tip
Write this down
Make a list
Get on the phone
In that cub reporter tone

Not so fast, Jerry
But I’m an Idea Man

You tossed them out like
Rice at a wedding
Tickertape on a parade
And then swept up like leaves
In a gust of autumn
They spiraled about you
The ideas, damn good ones,
As you took off
For unknown parts

A paragraph, she asked
Oh no this is not, no not
A minor tribute to
An Idea Man
Sometimes a tome
Must be condensed to a poem