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LUCILLE LORTEL AWARDS TO CELEBRATE 35 YEARS SUNDAY, MAY 3, 2020 AT NYU SKIRBALL CENTER
Lifetime Achievement Award to be presented to Tim Sanford, Artistic Director of Playwrights Horizons; Anna Deavere Smith to be inducted onto the Playwrights’ Sidewalk
New York, NY (January 16, 2020) – Details were announced today for the 35th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway. The Awards will be handed out on Sunday, May 3, 2020 at NYU Skirball Center for Performing Arts, beginning at 7:00pm EST. The Lucille Lortel Awards are produced by the Off-Broadway League and the Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation. Additional support is provided by TDF.
Among the special honors this year – the Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Tim Sanford, who recently announced he will be stepping down as Artistic Director of Playwrights Horizons in July 2020. Through 24 years leading the institution, Sanford has transformed Playwrights Horizons into one of the country’s foremost non-profit producers of bold new plays and musicals. Profiling Sanford, The Los Angeles Times theater critic, Charles McNulty, wrote that "Playwrights Horizons has been quite simply the most important crucible for contemporary playwriting in America."
Playwrights’ Sidewalk honoree, Anna Deavere Smith, is credited with having created a new form of theater. Her work combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance. Her play, Notes from the Field, was included in The New York Times list of The Best Theater of 2016 and Time magazine named it one of the Top 10 Plays of that year. She was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Fires in the Mirror, which was presented by Signature Theater this past November. Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, written about the 1992 Los Angeles riots, was named one of the best plays of the last twenty-five years by The New York Times and will be revived by Signature this April.
Members of the general public are welcome to attend the 7:00 PM ceremony. Public tickets are $75.00 and will be available starting April 2, via phone at 212-998-4941, online at www.nyuskirball.org and in person at the Skirball Center’s Shagan Box Office (556 LaGuardia Pl.) from Tuesday – Saturday from 12 – 6 PM, up until two hours before showtime.
*Honoree photos can be downloaded via Dropbox.
Important Dates Tuesday, March 31 2019-2020 Off-Broadway season ends Wednesday, April 2 Nominations Announced / Public tickets go on sale Wednesday, April 22 Nominees’ Breakfast Sunday, May 3 Award Ceremony at NYU Skirball Center
The Off-Broadway League’s Lortel Awards Producing & Administration Committee (Jeremy Adams, Carol Fishman, George Forbes, Danielle Karliner Naish, Kendra Ramthun, Catherine Russell, Lindsey Sag, and Casey York) produces the Lortel Awards Ceremony. Acclaimed writer/director Michael Heitzman returns to direct the Lortel Awards for the ninth consecutive year. Representatives of the Off-Broadway League, Actors’ Equity Association, Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, United Scenic Artists, the Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation, in addition to theatre journalists, academics and other Off-Broadway professionals, serve on the Voting Committee.
For updates and news about the ceremony and media releases, please visit www.LortelAwards.org. Follow the Lortel Awards (#LortelAwards) on Twitter at https://twitter.com/OffBroadwayNYC and like on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/OffBroadwayNYC.
ABOUT OUR HONOREES
TIM SANFORD Tim Sanford started at Playwrights Horizons as a literary intern in 1984. He served as Literary Manager for nine years and as Associate Artistic Director for two years before becoming Artistic Director in January 1996. Throughout his tenure at the influential institution, Sanford has endeavored to broaden the spectrum of writers that Playwrights—and, by extension, the landscape of American theatrical institutions—nurtures, and the ways in which the theater supports them, from commissions, readings, and productions to health insurance and other benefits. Among the many pathbreaking American playwrights the theater has produced under his leadership are Will Arbery, Jaclyn Backhaus, Annie Baker, Tanya Barfield, Clare Barron, Neal Bell, Adam Bock, David Cale, Kirsten Childs, Kia Corthron, Lisa D’Amour, Larissa FastHorse, Michael Friedman, Melissa James Gibson, David Greenspan, Adam Guettel, Jordan Harrison, Amy Herzog, Lucas Hnath, Michael R. Jackson, Kenneth Lonergan, Craig Lucas, Taylor Mac, Richard Nelson, Bruce Norris, Lynn Nottage, Robert O’Hara, Theresa Rebeck, Sarah Ruhl, Tori Sampson, Christopher Shinn, Jeanine Tesori, Anne Washburn, and Doug Wright.
In Sanford’s time as Artistic Director, Playwrights has been recognized with three Pulitzer Prizes, seven Tony Awards, and 40 OBIEs, among many other accolades. A 2008 Drama Desk Citation honored the institution’s “ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work.”
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher, and author. She is credited with having created a new form of theater. Smith's work combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance.
Smith has created over fifteen one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews. Her most recent play, Notes from the Field, looks at the vulnerability of impoverished youth, to the broken U.S. public school system as well as to incarceration. The New York Times named it among The Best Theater of 2016 and Time magazine named it one of the Top 10 Plays of that year. In 2018, HBO premiered the film version of Notes from the Field. Other plays authored by Smith include Let Me Down Easy, about health care; House Arrest, about the U.S. presidency and the press; and Twilight: Los Angeles, about the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Twilight was recently named one of the best plays of the last twenty-five years by The New York Times.
President Obama awarded Smith the National Humanities Medal in 2013. Smith was selected in 2015 to give the Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities, at the John F. Kennedy Center. In 2019, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Additional honors include the MacArthur Award, The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for achievement in the arts, the George Polk Career Award in Journalism, the Dean’s Medal from the Stanford University Medical School, and two Tony nominations. She was runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Fires in the Mirror.
Smith was recently seen on the ABC television series For the People and appears on the hit show black- ish. Previously she appeared in Nurse Jackie and The West Wing. Films include The American President, Philadelphia and Rachel Getting Married.
She is a University Professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
ABOUT THE LUCILLE LORTEL AWARDS The Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway were created in 1985 by the Off- Broadway League. The Lortel Awards recognize excellence in Off-Broadway by honoring the invaluable contribution of artists to the theatre community. Representatives of the Off-Broadway League, Actors’ Equity Association, Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, United Scenic Artists, the Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation, in addition to theatre journalists, academics and other Off-Broadway professionals, serve on the Voting Committee. Awards may be given in the following categories: Play, Musical, Solo Show, Revival, Alternative Theatrical Experience, Director, Choreographer, Lead Actor and Actress in a Play and Musical, Featured Actor and Actress in a Play and Musical, Scenic, Costume, Lighting, Sound, and Projection Design. The following honorary awards may also be given: Lifetime Achievement Award, Body of Work (awarded to an institution), Edith Oliver Service to Off-Broadway Award and induction onto the Playwrights’ Sidewalk in front of the historic Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City. For more information, please see www.LortelAwards.org.
ABOUT THE OFF-BROADWAY LEAGUE The Off-Broadway League was founded in 1959 to foster theatrical productions produced in Off-Broadway theatres (productions in Manhattan in venues with 100-499 seats), to assist in the voluntary exchange of information among its members, and to serve as a collective voice of its membership in pursuit of these goals. In the recent years the League has grown to represent an average of 150 individual members and theatres and 100 non-for-profit and commercial shows per season.
ABOUT THE LUCILLE LORTEL THEATRE FOUNDATION Lucille Lortel was known as the Queen of Off-Broadway. The Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation continues her mission of sustaining and advancing Off-Broadway theatre by enhancing the public's awareness and appreciation of Off-Broadway through production, preservation and promotion; encouraging the continued growth of Off-Broadway through fostering new artists and new works; developing and implementing new technologies increasing access to or improving the theatre-going experience; creating, improving and increasing theatrical infrastructure and capacity building, fostering excellence and diversity in the theatre, and; faithfully preserving the rich history and support the continued prosperity of Off-Broadway. The Foundation has several major programs, including the Lucille Lortel Awards, Internet Off-Broadway Data Base (www.IOBDB.com), High School Playwriting Fellowship, Live at the Lortel Podcast, Theatre Management Services, and Subsidized Theatre Space. For a listing of all the Foundation’s programs, previous Lortel Award nominees and recipients, information on the Lucille Lortel Theatre and Playwrights’ Sidewalk, and much more, please visit www.lortel.org.
ABOUT NYU SKIRBALL NYU Skirball, located in the heart of Greenwich Village, is one of New York City’s major presenters of international work, and has been the premier venue for cultural and performing arts events in lower Manhattan since 2003. The 800-seat theater, led by Director Jay Wegman, provides a home for internationally renowned artists, innovators and thinkers. NYU Skirball hosts over 300 events annually, from re-inventions of the classics to cutting-edge premieres, in genres ranging from dance, theater and performance arts to comedy, music and film.
NYU Skirball’s unique position within with New York University enables it to draw on the University’s intellectual riches and resources to enhance its programming with dialogues, public forums and conversations with artists, philosophers, scientists, Nobel Laureates and journalists. nyuskirball.org.
ABOUT TDF TDF is a not-for-profit service organization for the performing arts, dedicated to bringing the power of the performing arts to everyone. Founded in 1968, TDF’s mission is to sustain live theatre and dance by engaging and cultivating a broad and diverse audience and eliminating barriers to attendance. TDF fulfills its mission with a variety of programs that expand access, cultivate communities and support the makers of the performing arts. Best known for its theatregoing programs (including the TKTS by TDF Discount Booths and TDF Membership Programs), TDF’s accessibility (including open captioned, audio described and autism-friendly performances), school (serving over 12,000 New York City students annually), community engagement and information programs — as well as the TDF Costume Collection Rental and Research Programs — have introduced millions of people to the theatre and helped make the unique experience of theatre available to everyone. TDF envisions a world where the transformative experience of attending live theatre and dance is essential, relevant, accessible and inspirational. To learn more about TDF, go to: www.tdf.org.
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