Despite major damage to its Manasota Key compound from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the Hermitage Artist Retreat proves that the show must go on: The organization has announced that California-based playwright Naomi Iizuka has been selected as the fifth recipient of the Hermitage Major Theater Award (HMTA).

The jury-selected prize, established by the Hermitage in 2021 with support from Flora Major and the Kutya Major Foundation, offers one of the largest unrestricted nonprofit theater commissions in the United States. Iizuka will receive a cash prize of $35,000, a residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat and a developmental workshop in a major arts capital, which for this commission is anticipated for Chicago in late 2026.

An award-winning playwright, educator, and theater maker based in California, Iizuka's body of work includes Anon(ymous), 36 Views, Polaroid Stories, At the Vanishing Point, Language of Angels, Skin, Tattoo Girl and more. Her plays have been produced at theaters across the country, including BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Berkeley Rep, the Goodman, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, the Guthrie, Cornerstone, Children’s Theater Company, the Public Theater, and Campo Santo.

“I was thrilled and genuinely honored to find out that I had received the Hermitage Major Theater Award,” Iizuka said in a statement “To be chosen by one’s peers is so meaningful. It felt like this unexpected and incredibly generous gift in what I guess you could call the vast expanse of my mid-career.”

Iizuka is an alumna of New Dramatists and the recipient of a PEN/Laura Pels Award, an Alpert Award, a Whiting Award, a Stavis Award from the National Theatre Conference, a Joyce Foundation Award and a Hodder Fellowship. She was also a Berlind playwright-in-residence at Princeton University. Iizuka has written for The Terror: Infamy (AMC), Tokyo Vice (HBO Max), Bosch: Legacy (Amazon) and The Sympathizer (HBO Max). She is the head of the MFA playwriting program at University of California, San Diego.