Playwright Christopher Durang will be presented the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award at The Dramatists Guild of America's annual awards ceremony May 6 at Sony Hall.
The annual award recognizes distinguished lifetime achievement in theatrical writing. Previous recipients include Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, Jules Feiffer, Tina Howe, Pearl Cleage, Adrienne Kennedy, A.R. Gurney, John Guare, Micki Grant, Paula Vogel, Terrence McNally, Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, Lanford Wilson, Joseph Stein, Horton Foote, August Wilson, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Neil Simon, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Edward Albee and Arthur Miller. Career Achievement Awards have also been presented to Marsha Norman and Stephen Schwartz.
READ: Original Cast of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike to Reunite for Gala Reading
The Dramatists Guild’s other awards—including the Hull-Warriner, Loewe, Horton Foote, Lanford Wilson, and Flora Roberts Awards—will be announced at a later date.
Lloyd Suh, chair of the Dramatists Guild’s Awards Committee, said in a statement, “It’s a privilege to celebrate Christopher Durang with the Dramatists Guild’s highest honor, in recognition of his singular voice and his enduring impact on generations of other writers. His grace, wit, charm, and generosity are an example to all of us in the community of American dramatists.”
Durang, who has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 1978 and a member of the Dramatists Guild Council since 1981, is the author of Turning Off the Morning News (McCarter Theatre), Why Torture Is Wrong And The People Who Love Them, Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike (Tony Award for Best Play; recipient of the Dramatists Guild’s Hull-Warriner Award), A History of the American Film (Tony nomination), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Baby with the Bathwater, Laughing Wild, Betty’s Summer Vacation, Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, Miss Witherspoon (Pulitzer Prize finalist), The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Hull-Warriner Award), Sex and Longing, and the musical, Adrift in Macao, with book and lyrics by Durang and music by Peter Melnick.
Since its inception in 1919, the Dramatists Guild of America has been the professional association for playwrights, librettists, lyricists, and composers writing for the American stage.
Tickets for the 2024 Dramatists Guild Awards will go on sale in late March. For first
access to tickets, register by clicking here.
