New York, NY (October 7, 2025)–The Entertainment Community Fund (the national nonprofit serving professionals in the performing arts and entertainment industry) and Playwrights Horizons announced today that Grammy-nominated artist Rona Siddiqui is the 2025 recipient of The Mark O’Donnell Prize, an annual prize presented to an emerging theater artist in recognition of their talent and promise. She is a composer and lyricist based in NYC and is a recipient of the prestigious Kleban Prize for lyric writing, the Jonathan Larson Grant and the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award. Her show The Brown Musical: A New Brown Musical, an autobiographical comedy about growing up bi-ethnic in America, was developed at Playwrights Horizons and premiered at 54 Below in 2022.
To download photos of Rona Siddiqui and from The Mark O’Donnell Prize Lunch, click here.
The Mark O’Donnell Prize has continually changed the lives of countless folks including past recipients Alex Tatarsky (2024), Dustin H. Chinn (2023), Shayok Misha Chowdhury (2022), L Morgan Lee (2021), Iyvon Edebiri (2019), Julia Jarcho (2018) and Leah Nanako Winkler (2017).
Inspired by the singular mind of Mark O’Donnell, The Mark O’Donnell Prize is bestowed upon “America’s most anomalous, singular and curious emerging writers, composers, directors and designers.” The award includes a cash prize; use of The Mark O’Donnell Theater at the Entertainment Community Fund Arts Center (located at The Schermerhorn in Downtown Brooklyn) for one week to develop a reading of a new work; as well as counseling from the Entertainment Community Fund on two major challenges often faced by emerging artists: how to apply for affordable housing and obtaining health insurance. The Mark O’Donnell Prize is made possible by a gift from Steve O’Donnell in memory of his brother Mark.
The Schermerhorn, an award-winning 216-unit supportive housing development, is home to The Mark O’Donnell Theater. The Theater serves as a resource for Brooklyn-based artists and arts groups to aid in the development and sharing of their work, as well as a venue for integrating the residents of The Schermerhorn with the surrounding community through the arts. The building is operated by the Entertainment Community Fund in collaboration with Breaking Ground, a non-profit developer that provides permanent affordable housing.
After a career of critical acclaim, Mark O’Donnell achieved commercial success when he co-wrote the book of the musical Hairspray, based on the John Waters film, with Thomas Meehan. The production earned the pair the 2003 Tony Award and a celebrated seven-year run on Broadway, followed by the 2007 musical film adaptation. The writers went on to adapt the Tony-nominated musical Cry Baby for Broadway in 2008, based on a Waters film of the same name.
Mark O’Donnell’s Playwrights Horizons credits were That’s It, Folks!; Fables for Friends and The Nice and the Nasty. His other plays include Strangers on Earth, Vertigo Park and the musical Tots in Tinseltown. He collaborated with Bill Irwin on an adaptation of Moliere’s Scapin and co-authored a translation of Georges Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear. He also adapted Feydeau’s Private Fittings for the La Jolla Playhouse and a symphonic version of Pyramus and Thisbe for the Kennedy Center.
Mr. O’Donnell published two collections of comic stories Elementary Education and Vertigo Park and Other TALL Tales as well as two novels, Getting Over Homer and Let Nothing You Dismay. His humor, cartoons and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic and Esquire. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the George S. Kaufman Award.
The Mark O’Donnell Theater at the Entertainment Community Fund Arts Center is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by Council Member Stephen Levin.