2016 Lucille Lortel Awards Date Set; Suzan-Lori Parks & James Houghton to be Honored

The Off-Broadway League today announced details for the 2016 Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway. The 31st Annual Lucille Lortel Awards will be handed out on Sunday, May 1, 2016 at NYU Skirball Center, beginning at 7:00pm EST.

Among the special honors to be presented this year, the Lifetime Achievement Award will be given to Signature Theatre Founding Artistic Director James Houghton. It was recently announced Mr. Houghton would be stepping down from Signature Theatre after 25 years. Suzan-Lori Parks will be inducted onto the famed Playwrights' Sidewalk in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre. In 2002, Ms. Parks became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for her play, Topdog/Underdog, which was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play that year. The play began its life Off-Broadway at The Public Theater.

Members of the general public are welcome to view the 7:00 PM ceremony. Public tickets are $75.00 and will be available starting Thursday, March 31, 2016, via phone at 212.998.4941, online at www.nyuskirball.org and in person at the Skirball Center's Shagan Box Office (556 LaGuardia) from Tuesday - Saturday from 12 - 6 PM, and two hours before showtime.

Important Dates

March 30, 2016 Nomination Meeting - Nominations announced via press release late afternoon

March 31, 2016 2015-2016 Off-Broadway season ends

March 31, 2016 Public tickets go on sale

April 20, 2016 Nominees' Breakfast at Playwrights Horizons

May 1, 2016 Award Ceremony at NYU Skirball Center

The Off-Broadway League's Lortel Awards Producing & Administration Committee (Terry Byrne, Denise Cooper, Margaret Cotter, Carol Fishman, George Forbes, Michael Page, Catherine Russell, Lindsey Sag, and Seth Shepsle) produces the Lortel Awards Ceremony. Acclaimed writer/director Michael Heitzman returns to direct the Lortel Awards for the seventh consecutive year. The Lucille Lortel Awards are produced by special arrangement with the Lucille Lortel Foundation. Additional support is provided by Theatre Development Fund.

Representatives of the Off-Broadway League, Actors' Equity Association, Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, the Lucille Lortel Foundation, in addition to theatre journalists and academics and other Off-Broadway professionals, serve on the Voting Committee.

James Houghton is the Founding Artistic Director of Signature Theatre, the first nonprofit theatre company in the United States to devote each season of productions to the work of a single living playwright. Under his leadership, Signature opened the Frank Gehry-designed Pershing Square Signature Center, featuring three theatres, two rehearsal spaces and public lobby with café, bar and bookstore, and expanded programming including two additional playwrights' residency programs. Signature and its artists have received many accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize, OBIE Awards, Drama Desk Awards, Lucille Lortel Awards, and Outer Critics Circle Awards. In 2003, Signature was named "National Theatre of the Year" by the National Theatre Conference. In 2014, Signature Theatre became the first Off-Broadway theatre to be honored with the Regional Tony Award. Since 2006, Mr. Houghton has also served as the Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division at The Juilliard School. To enhance the program, Mr. Houghton and the Drama Division initiated significant new programming and opportunities for students. Among these opportunities are a new Master of Fine Arts Program, which offers free tuition and a living stipend during the fourth and final year of training; the introduction of a Playwrights Festival featuring performances of plays written by students of the renowned Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program; and a bridge to the profession through the creation of the Professional Studio hosted by Signature Theatre, allowing Juilliard's actors and writers to collaborate closely and build lasting artistic relationships. Mr. Houghton has been honored by The Acting Company with the 2012 John Houseman Award for his profound commitment to developing American actors and building a diverse audience for the theatre, as well as the William Inge Festival's 1998 Margo Jones Medal for an outstanding contribution to the American theatre. In 2015, he was awarded a Special Award for Sustained Achievement at the 60th Annual OBIE Awards. In 2013, he was inducted into the College of the Fellows of the American Theatre and presented with an honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts by his alma mater, Santa Clara University. Mr. Houghton has also served as the Artistic Director of the O'Neill Playwrights Conference (1999-2003), Artistic Director of the New Harmony Project (1996-1999), and the Artistic Advisor to the Guthrie Theater (1998-2012).

Named one of TIME Magazine's "100 Innovators for the Next New Wave," in 2002, Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her Broadway hit, Topdog/Underdog. A MacArthur "Genius" Award and Gish Prize recipient, she has also been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her new play, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) made its world premiere at The Public Theater in New York, followed by a celebrated run at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, MA, and is opening in Spring of 2016 at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, CA. The play was named a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was awarded the 2015 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, as well as the 2014 Horton Foote Prize. Parks's work on The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess was honored with the 2012 Tony Award. Her numerous plays include The Book of Grace, In the Blood (2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Venus (1996 OBIE Award), 365 Days/365 Plays, and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, among others. Suzan-Lori's novel Getting Mother's Body was published by Random House. Her first feature-length screenplay was Girl 6, written for Spike Lee. She's also written screenplays for Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, and Jodie Foster, as well as adapting Zora Neale Hurston's classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which premiered on ABC's Oprah Winfrey Presents. Parks is currently writing an adaptation of the film The Harder They Come for a live stage musical, and she is also creating a television series for Amazon. Suzan-Lori serves as a professor in dramatic writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and is also the Master Writer Chair at The Public Theater.

Photo by Stephanie Diani