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David Yee, a playwright who teaches at the University of Toronto Mississauga, , Canada’s highest valued theatre award.

The lucrative prize is awarded annually to a mid-career professional artist whose groundbreaking work significantly contributes to advancing the art form. It is named after playwright Elinore Siminovitch and Emeritus Lou Siminovitch.

The Siminovitch laureate receives $75,000 and the opportunity to select an up-and-coming artist to receive a $25,000 protégé prize. Yee, co-founding artistic director of fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company, selected Julie Phan, Toronto writer-performer and arts leader.

“I tell my students that there will come a time in the process of creating a play where you must relinquish control to the play itself – when the play will start to tell you what it wants to be,” Yee said in his acceptance speech. “This is what writing has taught me: how to listen to something greater than myself. Not just as a way to create, but as a way to live in the world.” 

Yee, who studied theatre and drama studies at ��������οMississauga and teaches playwriting at the university, won the in 2015.

about the infamous Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, featuring fourth-year students from the Theatre and Drama Studies program offered jointly by ��������οMississauga and Sheridan College.