Laura with two of her Meridian students, Amos (left) and Ezra (right).

Laura Grill Jaye, Somerville Singer/Songwriter and Music Teacher at Meridian Academy in Boston, along with former Meridian Academy Humanities colleague Shayok Misha Chowdhury, have won the Inaugural Relentless Musical Award. Given by the American Playwriting Foundation, the $65,000 prize was established in honor of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman to recognize artistic work that, “challenges, exhibits fearlessness, exudes passion, and is relentlessly truthful.” The musical writing duo, also known as Grill and Chowder, won for their piece, “How The White Girl Got Her Spots and Other 90s Trivia.” 

Jaye and Chowdhury describe the musical as “our most personal musical.” They call it an “automythography, with characters who are fictional projections of ourselves. In it, we are exploring the agonies and delights of belonging to racial categories and what it feels like to exceed those categories altogether, to find that those categories can’t possibly capture all the messiness of our lives.” For the team, collaboration is at the center of their journey together. “We love watching our questions metamorphose in real-time, in the dissonant space between us.”

Chowdury and Jaye met at Meridian Academy in Jamaica Plain in 2011. During their time at Meridian, the two collaborated on a number of original musicals, some of which they incorporated into the student theater program, and that work has continued through today. The Relentless award continues the notice their work is getting having last year won a Jonathan Larson Grant from the American Theater Wing (who also give out the Tony Awards). Laura continues to teach music at Meridian, as well as at M.I.T., and Misha is now a writer, director, and performer based in Brooklyn.   

Websites:Meridian Academy: www.meridianacademy.org

Relentless Award: www.americanplaywritingfoundation.org