Kevin Cirone receives Mazumdar New Play Award

Alleyway Theatre announces Kevin Cirone’s HIS GIRL WATSON recipient of the 2024/25 Mazumdar New Play Award

Buffalo’s Alleyway Theatre has announced the recipient of the 2024/25 Maxim Mazumdar New Play Award. Playwright Kevin Cirone will receive the annual award for his play, HIS GIRL WATSON: A SHERLOCK NOIR. The award comes with a cash prize, as well as a full production this June.

“The Mazumdar Award represents brand new plays by both established and emerging writers at the top of their game,” explains Artistic Director Chris J Handley. “For over thirty-five years now, this award has honored playwrights who are creating new works for the stage that are highly theatrical in style, contemporary in conversation, and ambitious in scope.  The work we do at the Alleyway is to develop and celebrate tomorrow’s American theatre today, and we are delighted to share Kevin’s piece.”

The Mazumdar Award has been presented each year since 1989 in memory of Canadian actor/playwright Maxim Mazumdar, whose many contributions to the early growth of Alleyway Theatre were artistically invaluable. In 2020, the entry fee was eliminated, opening access to the yearly competition as part of the company’s latest strategic plan. This resulted in a surge of entries, totaling 839 this season.

Over the eighteen months, a volunteer group of 75 theatre artists both local to Western New York and from across the country assembled with the task of reading and scoring these fully original scripts for the stage. In two rounds, the readers narrowed the plays to recommend 45 scripts to the artistic team. From that group, five semi-finalists and three finalists were selected, in addition to the winner.

The world premiere of HIS GIRL WATSON: A SHERLOCK NOIR will play the Alleyway mainstage beginning in June 2026. Creative team and casting to be announced.

Recent awardees include Karissa Murrel Myers’ BLACK BEAR ISLAND (2023), T. Adamson’s THE NATURAL HORSE (2022), Deborah Yarchun’s THE ALEPH COMPLEX (2020) and Bruce Walsh’s BERSERKER (2019). Because of the Covid shutdown, no award was presented in 2021.

"I'm incredibly proud and excited for this award and the opportunity to work with Alleyway,” says Mazumdar recipient Kevin Cirone. “HIS GIRL WATSON has been a passion project for several years and I'm really looking forward to seeing it finally come to life, especially on a stage that has such a deep commitment to supporting new works.  I hope audiences will be as thrilled seeing it premiere on Alleyway's stage as I am."

ABOUT THE PLAY
In post-WWII Boston, Doctor Josie Watson is sent to deliver pills to an agoraphobic narcoleptic on Baker Street - and drawn into a dark series of events involving a murdered baseball pitcher, a mysterious woman in green, and a notorious crime family. Amidst her own personal trauma, Watson faces an international conspiracy and grapples with a shadowy syndicate on the hunt for a certain renowned detective by the name of Sherlock Holmes.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Kevin Cirone is a Kennedy Center Playwriting alumnus and former actor from the Boston area who has been entertaining audiences in New England, New York and beyond for over 20 years. Other stage works include THE GOOD DELI (Moonbox Theater Company), CREATIVE LICENSE, A NEW MUSICAL (New York International Fringe Festival), NOMINATION (Huntington Theater Company), VOICE OF REASON, A ZOOM PLAY (Umbrella Stage Company), THREE SEATS (Boston Theater Marathon), VIRGINIA SLIM WITH TEN MINUTES TO GO (Boston Theater Marathon), FOR TIME (Boston Theater Marathon), and WHISKEY NEAT (Boston Theater Marathon).  In addition to writing, Kevin is an avid traveler and consumer of mysteries.  For more information, find Kevin on the New Play Exchange and at KevinCirone.com.

ABOUT THE FINALISTS

Winner
• HIS GIRL WATSON: A SHERLOCK NOIR by Kevin Cirone

Finalists
• THERE ARE BLACK ROSES UNDER THE SUN by Cris Blak
• COMPOST by Matt Hoverman
• ENORMITY, GIRL, AND THE EARTHQUAKE IN HER LUNGS by Chelsea Wooley

Semi Finalists
• THE HAUNTING OF HOOVERTON HOTEL by Jacob Albarella and Jason Kaiser
• LUMIN by Emma Gibson
• THE APPLIANCE DEPARTMENT by Bella Poynton
• WALKING WHILE BLACK by Philip Christian Smith
• WE ARE THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS by Christian St. Croix

THE 2026 MAZUMDAR AWARD
The next Mazumdar Award submission window will open for new, unproduced, full length plays from March 1-15, 2026. The winning play will receive a cash prize and be produced in an upcoming Alleyway mainstage season. Details and information will be available at alleyway.com.

ABOUT ALLEYWAY
Alleyway Theatre, Buffalo’s award-winning nationally recognized home for new plays since 1980, is a professional theatre company and collaborative incubator for bold, visceral new theatre. Education & development programs foster the talents of emergent artists from Western New York and beyond ... embracing fearlessness, theatricality, humanity, and authenticity.

Now in its 46th season, Alleyway occupies a former Greyound bus station in Buffalo’s historic Theatre District. The company produces four major new works each season, in addition to special presentations throughout the year. Its education arm specializes in offering students of all ages opportunities to create new theatre, not just as performers but as playwrights and devisers. Alleyworks is the play development umbrella, which this year will present three major new play workshops.

The company has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, and was recently represented off-Broadway by TONY nominee Alex Brightman’s THE LIFE AND SLIMES OF MARC SUMMERS and A KIDMAN CAROL by Kevin Zak (GINGER TWINSIES, DEATH BECOMES HER) – both of which were developed and produced at the Alleyway.

Alleyway Theatre is located at 1 Curtain Up Alley, Buffalo NY 14202 – right in the heart of Buffalo’s Theatre District. More details are available at alleyway.com