Broadway Lights Will Dim Today In Memory Of Playwright Terrence McNally

Legendary Broadway playwright Terrence McNally passed away last year from complications due to coronavirus, and today the community comes together to celebrate his legacy. To commemorate his life and work, the Committee of Theatre Owners will dim the lights of Broadway theatres in New York for one minute at exactly 6:30pm today, November 3, what would have been his 83rd Birthday.

Additionally, this afternoon, the Historic Landmarks and Preservation Center (Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Chair) will place a Cultural Medallion on the home Terrence McNally shared with his husband, Tom Kirdahy, for more than 20 years, in an intimate ceremony with family and friends.

Terrence McNally was a legendary American playwright, librettist, and LGBTQ+ trailblazer, described by the New York Times as "the bard of the American Theater." In a professional career that spanned six decades, Terrence was the recipient of five Tony Awards (two for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class, two for the books to his musicals Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement). He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades include an Emmy Award (for the groundbreaking Andre's Mother), two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.

Active in the regional and off-Broadway theatre movements as well as on Broadway, Terrence was one of the few playwrights of his generation to have successfully passed from the avant-garde to mainstream acclaim. His incredible legacy lives on in his plays, musicals, and operas that continue to be performed all over the world as well as in his papers, which are kept and open to the public at the Harry Ransom Center in the University of Texas at Austin. Terrence's works include: ...And Things That Go Bump in the Night, Next, Sweet Eros, ¡Cuba, Si!, Noon (in Morning, Noon, and Night with Leonard Melfi and Isreal Horovitz), Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?, Whiskey, Bad Habits, The Ritz, The Rink (with Kander & Ebb), It's Only A Play, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Andre's Mother, The Lisbon Traviata, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Kiss of the Spider Woman (with Kander & Ebb), A Perfect Ganesh, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Master Class, Ragtime (with Ahrens & Flaherty), Corpus Christi, The Full Monty (with David Yazbek), Dead Man Walking (with Jake Heggie), A Man of No Importance (with Ahrens & Flaherty), The Stendahl Syndrome, Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams, Crucifixion, Some Men, Deuce, Unusual Acts of Devotion, Catch Me if You Can (with Shaiman & Wittman), Golden Age, And Away We Go, Mothers and Sons, The Visit (with Kander & Ebb), Great Scott (with Jake Heggie), Anastasia (with Ahrens & Flaherty), and Immortal Longings (Fire and Air).