34th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards Set for May 5th, 2019; Telsey + Company and More Receive Honors

Details were announced today for the 34th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway. The Awards will be handed out on Sunday, May 5, 2019 at NYU Skirball Center for Performing Arts, beginning at 7:00pm EST. The Lucille Lortel Awards are produced by the Off-Broadway League by special arrangement with the Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation. Additional support is provided by TDF.

Among the special honors to be presented this year - recognized with the Outstanding Body of Work Award, Telsey + Company, founded in 1988, is an award-winning organization of casting professionals in New York City and Los Angeles, with local, regional, national, and international clientele. Their projects span all media of performance art (film, television, theatre, commercials, dance, and more). Recent Off-Broadway projects include Be More Chill, Carmen Jones, and Alice By Heart.

Playwrights' Sidewalk honoree María Irene Fornés was a Cuban-American avant garde playwright and director, who was a leading figure of the Off-Off-Broadway movement in the 1960s. A favorite of critics, her spare, poetic and emotionally forceful works were hallmarks of experimental theater for four decades. Notable works include Promenade, The Successful Life of 3, Fefu and Her Friends, Mud, Sarita, and Letters from Cuba. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize with her play What of the Night? in 1990. She earned a 2017 Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Signature Theatre's Signature Plays: Edward Albee's The Sandbox, María Irene Fornés' Drowning, and Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro.

Recognized with the Edith Oliver Service to Off-Broadway Award, Terry Byrne has worked in the NYC theatre arena for 35 years, and as General Manager of The Westside Theatre for 28 years. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Off-Broadway League since 1993. Her work with the League includes participation on negotiating committees for the League's collectively bargained agreements with AEA, SDC, and USA. She has also served on the Administration and Host Committees for the Lucille Lortel Awards, and as Chair of the Off-Broadway Chapter of the Broadway Green Alliance. In June 2018, Ms. Byrne was elected the first female President of the Off-Broadway League in its 60-year history.

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 3, 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.