The 32nd Annual Lucille Lortel Awards were presented last evening, at the Skirball Center for Performing Arts.
Tuesday morning, bright and early, the 2017 Tony Nominees were announced at the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.
Putin Critic and writer Boris Akunin writes Hamlet. A Version, directed by Irina Gachechiladze and translated by Ileana Alexandra Orlich. On now at Theatre at St. Clements.
Last night, the 70th annual Tony Awards, recognized Broadway’s finest at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. We were lucky enough to sit in the media room, and interview some of the winners face to face.
The cast of Hamilton speaks with the press in the media room of the 70th annual Tony Awards.
On Monday May 23rd, the seventh annual Lilly Awards were held at the off-Broadway Signature Theatre. The red carpet was fun and casual as artists across all theatrical disciplines posed for photos. Looking around the lobby of the theater, one was surrounded by a warm community of passionate artists who are also active forces of change in the industry, such as Danai Gurira and Diane Paulus. I briefly spoke with two of the night’s honorees, Jessie Mueller and Kathy Najimy.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given or something someone’s said that’s really resonated with you?
JESSIE MUELLER: (Laughing) Simply don’t let people f**k with you. Stay your course.
How does it feel to be honored at the Lilly Awards today?
KATHY NAJIMY: It feels great! You know, in this business, we get a lot of prizes here and there, but this one is really important and special to me because it has the word “activism” in it. A lot of times, as an actress, you might get recognized for a role you did or a movie that was popular that you maybe didn’t do that much in or whatever, and because I am an activist first before an actress, this means so much to me. I love that they’re both in the same sentence because I am an actress and an activist. When Amanda Greene said, “Oh they wanna give you an award!” I said, “What for?” and she said, “The actress-activist-whatever award,” I thought, “Wow that’s a good day.”
How do you manage to balance the art and acting with activism because I can imagine they come up against each other.
KN: I don’t think anybody balances anything. I just got asked to speak somewhere and I go, “What do you mean me to speak about?” and they said, “We want you to speak about how you balance being a mother, a wife, an activist, an actress…” and I said, ”
Oh, stop right there. You assume that anyone in the world is able to do that.” I don’t know that that’s the goal because it’s never balanced. So you just sort of do what you do that day and then you’re tired and then the next day you do the next thing. It’s not ever perfectly balanced–the parenting, the apartment owning, the New York living, the activist, the actress, health, nutrition. That day you do where your heart takes you.
Who is someone that inspires you?
KN: Well you know, obviously tonight, my friend Gloria Steinem is here and she’s giving me the award and she’s really inspired me since I was fourteen years old when I reached up for the first Ms. Magazine and realized there were other people out there like me. In those days, there wasn’t the internet so you just thought you were the only one with crazy ideas. My mother, I know people say that, but I would say Gloria Steinem.
The Lilly Awards honor the extraordinary contributions made to the American Theater by women, as well as announce the $25,000 Stacey Mindich Prize, which funds a new work by a female playwright, and the Leah Ryan Prize, which awards an annual cash prize to an emerging woman playwright and produces a reading of the winning play in New York City.
Writer, political activist, and feminist organizer, Gloria Steinem, along with Academy Award-winner and 2016 Tony Award nominee Lupita Nyong’o and the women of Eclipsed, presented awards to honorees including Tony Award-winner and 2016 Tony Award nominee Jessie Mueller, Kathy Najimy, Genne Murphy, Candis Jones, Rehana Lew Mirza, and the women of Waking the Feminists. Other presenters included Lloyd Suh, Russell G. Jones, Rachel Chavkin, and Neena Beeber. The Lilly Awards also recognized Norbert Leo Butz and his organization, The Angel Band Project, as well as boasted special musical performances by Rebecca Naomi Jones, Amanda Green, and Georgia Stitt.
The Lilly Awards were started in the Spring of 2010 as a way to honor the work of women in the American Theater. The founders of The Lillys are Julia Jordan, Marsha Norman and Theresa Rebeck. The awards are named for Lillian Hellman, a pioneering American playwright who famously said “You need to write like the devil and act like one too when necessary.”
For additional information about the Lilly Awards (including a list of all past recipients), visit www.thelillyawards.org.
Everyone there was under pressure.
“It’s heavy, isn’t it?”
George C. Wolfe accepted his award graciously and with more than a little humor, hoisting the notoriously heavy Monte Cristo award up in his arms with aplomb and cheeky dramatics. This was not a stressful night. There was no suspense. There may have been only one winner that night, but everyone knew him, and no one was complaining.
The atmosphere on the red carpet was breezy and exciting, everyone there not in anticipation of either losing or winning, but just there to celebrate one man. And what a man he is. George C. Wolfe, renowned director of Angels in America and countless others, including Shuffle Along, which has just received 10 Tony nominations for its outstanding status as musical and civil rights activism, more than deserved the award bestowed upon him last night. And everyone seemed to think so.
Preston Whiteway, Executive Director of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, explained the award as such:
“The Monto Cristo award is named after the house where our namesake, Eugene O’Neill, grew up, and of course he set two of the greatest America dramas in that house, the Long Day’s Journey into Night, being revived this season, and Ah, Wilderness!, his only comedy. And so with that sort of balance on both sides of the scale there with theatre, with comedy and tragedy, I think it’s a perfect name for this award which is given to an artist who’s pioneered in the same way that Eugene O’Neill has- and on top of all of that, it was his father’s greatest role, the Count of Monte Cristo.”
He further went on to explain how Wolfe exemplifies a recipient of the award:
“Few can match George Wolfe’s trailblazing leader as a writer, as a director- he’s a multi-hyphenate, he’s a writer, he’s an actor, he’s a director, he’s an artistic producer, he does it all. There really could be nobody more worthy for an award honoring significant artists in American theatre.”
As for Wolfe himself, when asked about his pioneering work on African-American and LGBT theatre, he had only this to say, which he later repeated in his acceptance speech:
“I wouldn’t even call it activism, I just would call it – I don’t know, just responsibility. When you live in a world where you are in a capacity to hire people or you make decisions, then you may need to make decisions that are reflective of the world in which you live.”
Responsibility is something Wolfe holds very true to his heart. In his acceptance speech after the dinner, he thanked everyone in the room for their support as he existed as a fledgling young writer, then director in the theatre world. His last words were “Thank you so much”, and it wasn’t for the award, but for the help he had received along the way that led him to this moment, to being able to have such an impact on the world through theatre. He feels responsible in turn to “act as not only a director, but a mentor”. It’s the true spirit of the theatrical world- everyone collaborates. Whether they are actually participating in the movement itself onstage, like Savion Glover, Tony Award-winning choreographer that performed that night in celebration of longtime associate Wolfe, or assisting in offstage things like production, like the presenter Broadway producer Hal Prince, winner of the most Tony Awards ever, everyone is a part of the process.
George C. Wolfe understands this as a fundamental rule of theatre, and that, along with his genius and talent, deserves ample celebration.
On May 4th, the Tony Nominee’s sat down with the press to discuss their nominations and what it meant to each of them to be recognized by the Broadway community.
On Wednesday May 4, the Tony Nominees met with the press to discuss their achievements, at the Paramount Hotel. Daveed Diggs, who plays Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, in the incredible Hamilton, and the show’s set designer David Korins, sat down to talk about their nominations.