The American Theatre Critics Association has selected Moises Kaufman's play, "33 Variations," to receive the 2008 Harold and Mimi Steinberg /American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award. The announcement was made Saturday at Actors Theatre of Louisville during the Humana Festival of New American Plays.

The award includes a commemorative plaque and a cash prize of $25,000 -- the largest national playwriting award. Deborah Zoe Laufer's "End Days" and Sarah Ruhl's "Dead Man's Cell Phone" also received Steinberg/ATCA citations and $7,500 each.

At the Humana, the critics' organization also gave its M. Elizabeth Osborn Award for a play by an emerging playwright to "Gee's Bend" by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder.

"The long-standing partnership between the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the American Theatre Critics Association has recognized some of today's greatest writers, and helped identify the great playwrights of tomorrow," said trustee Jim Steinberg. "We're delighted to help support the unique telling of tales on the American stage."

The Steinberg/ATCA Award was started in 1977 to honor new plays produced at regional theaters outside New York City, where there are many new play awards. No play is eligible if it has gone on to a New York production within the award year (in this case, 2007).

Kaufman's "33 Variations" debuted in September at Washington's Arena Stage. It offers a fictional imagining of Beethoven's creation of 33 brilliant variations on a prosaic waltz. The composer's obsessive pursuit of perfection parallels a modern tale of a terminally-ill musicologist struggling with her own obsession to unearth the source of Beethoven's.

Laufer's "End Days" premiered in October at Florida Stage in Manalapan. Sometimes comic, sometimes moving, it studies the challenge of maintaining faith in a world dominated by science and fear. A Jewish family copes with the aftermath of 9/11 as the mother, now a born-again Christian, tries to convert them before the rapture arrives -- on Wednesday.

Ruhl's "Dead Man's Cell Phone" made its bow at Washington D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in June. The quirky comedy examines the fallout when a lonely woman takes the cell phone from the body of dead man she discovers sitting next to her in a cafe and begins answering his calls.

These three were among six finalists selected from 28 eligible scripts submitted by ATCA members. They were evaluated by a committee of 12 theater critics spread widely across the country, led by chairman Wm. F. Hirschman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and vice-chair George Hatza of the Reading (Pa.) Eagle.

"The amazing range of work -- dramas, fantasies, musicals, farces, melodramas -- was uplifting confirmation that theater remains a vital and evolving art form that can speak to every generation," Hirschman said.

Since the inception of ATCA's New Play Award in 1977, honorees have included Lanford Wilson, Marsha Norman, August Wilson, Jane Martin, Arthur Miller, Mac Wellman, Adrienne Kennedy, Donald Margulies, Lee Blessing, Lynn Nottage, Horton Foote and Craig Lucas. Last year's honoree was Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's Hunter Gatherers.

The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust was created in 1986 by Harold Steinberg on behalf of himself and his late wife. Pursuing its primary mission to support the American theater, it has provided grants totaling millions of dollars to support new productions of American plays and educational programs for those who may not ordinarily experience live theater.

The Osborn Award winning play, "Gees Bend," depicts the turbulent history of African Americans in the 20th century by focusing on a single family in the real community of Gee's Bend, Alabama. Although it is fiction, Wilder did on-the-ground research with the women of the town who earned national recognition through exhibits of the quilts made by several generations.

Wilder was told by quilter Mary Lee Bendolph, "Just write it honest." Her play was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Southern Writers Project, and its premiere was in January, 2007 at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. It has since toured the state and received productions elsewhere with more slated for 2008.

The Osborn award recognizes the work of an author who has not yet achieved national stature -- e.g., has not had a significant New York production, been staged in more than a few regional theaters or received other major national awards. It was established in 1993 to honor the memory of play editor and critic M. Elizabeth Osborn. It carries a $1,000 prize, funded by the Foundation of the American Theatre Critics Association.

ATCA was founded in 1974 and works to raise critical standards and public awareness of critics' functions and responsibilities. The only national association of professional theater critics, with several hundred members working for newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations and websites, ATCA is a national section of the International Association of Theatre Critics, a UNESCO-affiliated organization that sponsors seminars and congresses worldwide.

ATCA also presents the Francesca Primus Prize, funded by the Francesca Ronnie Primus Foundation, honoring outstanding contributions to the American theater by a female artist who has not yet achieved national prominence. Annually, ATCA makes a recommendation for the Regional Theater Tony Award presented by the American Theatre Wing/Broadway League and votes on inductions into the Theater Hall of Fame.

Other members of the ATCA New Play committee, which determined these awards, are Michael Elkin, Jewish Exponent (Pennsylvania); Wendy Parker, The Village Mill (Virginia); Michael Sander, Back Stage (Minnesota); Herb Simpson, City Newspaper (Rochester, NY); Chad Jones, Oakland (Cal.) Tribune; Jay Handelman, Sarasota Herald-Tribune; Ellen Fagg, The Salt Lake Tribune; Misha Berson, Seattle Times; Pam Harbaugh, Florida Today; and Elizabeth Keill, Independent Press (Morristown, NJ).

For more information on ATCA, visit www.americantheatrecritics.org.

For more information on the Steinberg/ATCA Award, contact Christopher Rawson, chair of ATCA's Executive Committee, at crawson@post-gazette.com, or Wm. F. Hirschman, chair of the ATCA New Play Committee, at muckrayk@aol.com.