A play exploring how digital technology can collapse the linear experience of aging and reality itself is the winner of the 2025 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Playwriting from the Neukom Institute for Computational Science.
The Age of Mary by New York-based playwright Avery Deutsch follows the titular character, an actress in her 70s, as she plays a teenager in a big-budget motion-capture film. Mary and the play’s three other characters struggle to reconcile their real selves with their roles on a physical movie set dedicated to producing digital entertainment.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to receive the Neukom Literary Arts Award for Playwriting,” Deutsch says. “I am so looking forward to working on my play with Northern Stage and Dartmouth. I feel honored that The Age of Mary was selected and can’t wait to get to work.”
Established in 2018, the annual Neukom award considers plays and other full-length works for the theater that address the question of what it means to be a human in a computerized world. The award is a partnership between the Neukom Institute, the Department of Theater, and Northern Stage, the professional theater company based in White River Junction, Vt.
Three plays were chosen as honorable mentions for 2025: Headless Nebraska by Chandler Hubbard; Howard Waffleman’s Love Life by Scooter Pietsch; and Smart by Mary Hamilton. These honorees were selected from a record-breaking 161 submissions.
Deutsch’s poetic play wonders how porous or impermeable the line between our bodies and ourselves is, and how technology can blur that boundary, as well as the pain and joy of bringing to light the parts of ourselves we try to banish. Tony-nominated director Anne Kauffman will prepare the play for public readings to be held at Dartmouth and Northern Stage in April.
“I continue to be staggered by and grateful for our collaborative effort, and the volume of extraordinary work that we have been able to surface with our prize,” says Dan Rockmore, director of the Neukom Institute, professor of mathematics and computer science, and creator of the award program.
The Neukom Institute champions computational innovation across Dartmouth’s academic landscape. The Literary Arts Award for Playwriting exemplifies this mission, examining how computational thinking shapes our cultural and social world.
“Deutsch’s play shines a bright light on the complicated dissonances that exist between digital and material lives, and the complexities inherent in trying to live simultaneously in both of them,” Rockmore says. “Anyone alive today will relate to the intensity and peculiarity of life caught between the concrete and the contrived.”
“The Age of Mary explores the uncanny world of motion-capture filming, an art form where the line between the human and the digital worlds is very thin,” says Sarah Wansley, the associate artistic director at Northern Stage.
“This unique setup not only offers thrilling theatrical possibilities, but also serves as an imaginative jumping-off point for all of the ways technology mediates our experiences of aging, relationships, and our own bodies,” Wansley says. "Deutsch's writing elevates contemporary dialogue to poetry.”
The Age of Mary, which was chosen from a blind submission process, also recently won a Terrance McNally New Works Incubator award from Rattlestick Theater in New York City. The Neukom Award includes a $5,000 prize and a weeklong workshop at Dartmouth and Northern Stage ending with two public readings of the play.
The first reading will take place on the Dartmouth campus at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 25, in Filene Auditorium in Moore Hall. Northern Stage will host the second reading at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 26, at the Byrne Theatre in the Barrette Center for the Arts at Northern Stage.