Bruce Vilanch and Julie Halston will host the 20th annual Lucille Lortel Awards on Monday, May 2nd at Dodgers Stages at 7 PM. The ceremony will be presented by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers, and will be followed by an after-party at Ruth's Chris Steak House.The Lucille Lortel Awards, which have been honoring outstanding off-Broadway achievement since 1985, will feature a plethora of performances. The famed awards ceremony will celebrate its twentieth anniversary with performances from nominated musicals, Altar Boyz, Junie B. Jones, Lone Star Love and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. In addition, new short works by such acclaimed writers and composers as Charles Busch, Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and Anna Devere Smith will be presented. There will be a Forbidden Broadway musical tribute performed by the cast, and Charles Ludlam, the avant-garde head of the Ridiculous Theatre Company who died of AIDS in 1987, will be inducted onto the Playwrights Sidewalk that famously sits outside the Lucille Lortel theatre.
Vilanch and Halston are currently co-stars in Hairspray; he plays Edna, while she portrays numerous comic roles including Prudy Pingleton. Vilanch has been playing the big, blonde and beautiful housewife for over a year now, having starred in the musical's national tour. He is one of the most successful comedy writers in the business. He has won 6 Emmys for his 15 Academy Awards scripts, and has also written for the Tonys, Emmys and Grammys. A wise-cracking regular on Hollywood Squares for four seasons, he has also toured a one-man "bio comedy" around the country and is the subject of the documentary Get Bruce!Halston's Broadway credits include the recent Roundabout revival of Twentieth Century, the 2003 revival of Gypsy (in which she played Miss Cratchit and Electra), the 2001 Roundabout revival of The Women and the 2000 Roundabout revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in White Chocolate, The Butter and Egg Man, The Vagina Monologues, and as a founding member of Charles Busch's company, The Lady in Question and Red Scare on Sunset (for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award). She is known to TV audiences as Bitsy Von Muffling on Sex and the City.
The Lucille Lortel Award's nominating/voting committee is appointedby the League of Off-Broadway Theatres & Producers,
the Lucille Lortel Foundation and Actors Equity Association, Society of
Stage Directors & Choreographers, as well as journalists, educators and other off-Broadway theatre professionals. The awards are produced annually by the League in association with the Lucille Lortel foundation, and additional support is provided by the Theatre Development Fund. Sponsors include Ruth's Chris Steak House, Ketel One Vodka, Geyser Peak Wines, HX Magazine, Discover Card, Glaceau, TheMenEvent.com and HotNYCDeals.Dodgers Stages is located at 340 W. 50th St., and Ruth's Chris Steak House at 148 W. 51st St.The list of Lucille Lortel Award nominees is as followed: Outstanding Play
Book
by Kevin Del Aguila, Music & Lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael
Patrick Walker, Conceived by Ken Davenport & Marc Kessler
Producer: Ken Davenport and Robyn Goodman, in association with Walt
Grossman, Ruth Hendel, Sharon Karmazin, Matt Murphy and Mark Shacket
Produced
by Atlantic Theater Company in association with Roger Alan Gindi,
Stewart F. Lane & Bonnie Conley, Dan Whitten, Herbert Goldsmith
Productions, WetRock Entertainment
Outstanding Revival
Counsellor-At-Law
By Elmer Rice
Produced by Peccadillo Theater Company
Engaged
By W. S. Gilbert
Produced by Theatre for A New Audience
Finian's Rainbow
Book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, Music by Burton Lane, Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg Produced by Irish Repertory Theatre