Christopher Durang to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at 2024 Dramatists Guild Awards

Playwright Christopher Durang is the recipient of The Dramatists Guild's 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award. The award will be presented at the Guild’s annual awards ceremony on Monday, May 6, 2024, at Sony Hall. 

The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented by the Dramatists Guild Council in recognition of distinguished lifetime achievement in theatrical writing. Previous recipients include Gretchen Cryer & Nancy Ford, Jules Feiffer, Tina Howe, Pearl Cleage, Adrienne Kennedy, A.R. Gurney, John Guare, Micki Grant, Paula Vogel, Terrence McNally, Sheldon Harnick & Jerry Bock, Lanford Wilson, Joseph Stein, Horton Foote, August Wilson, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander & Fred Ebb, Neil Simon, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Edward Albee and Arthur Miller. Career Achievement Awards have also been presented to Marsha Norman and Stephen Schwartz.   

Lloyd Suh, chair of the Dramatists Guild’s Awards Committee, shared, “It’s a privilege to celebrate Christopher Durang with the Dramatists Guild’s highest honor, in recognition of his singular voice and his enduring impact on generations of other writers. His grace, wit, charm, and generosity are an example to all of us in the community of American dramatists.”

“Christopher Durang is one of today’s most luminous talents, and Final Draft is delighted to support the Dramatists Guild of America as they recognize his distinguished career,” added Shelly Mellott, President of Final Draft.

About Christopher Durang

Award-winning playwright and educator Christopher Durang is a New Jersey native. He attended Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, where he studied English and playwriting, respectively. He has also taught at Yale and Princeton. Together with Marsha Norman, Durang directed the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School from 1984 to 2016. He has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 1978 and a member of the Dramatists Guild Council since 1981. 

Durang’s plays include Turning Off the Morning News (McCarter Theatre; directed by Emily Mann), Why Torture Is Wrong And The People Who Love Them, Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike (Tony Award for Best Play; recipient of the Dramatists Guild’s Hull-Warriner Award), A History of the American Film (Tony nomination), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Baby with the Bathwater, Laughing Wild, Betty’s Summer Vacation, Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, Miss Witherspoon (Pulitzer Prize finalist), The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Hull-Warriner Award), Sex and Longing, and a musical, Adrift in Macao, with book and lyrics by Durang and music by Peter Melnick.

Durang was named the Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Awards master dramatist. He is a recipient of the Tony, Obie, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller; the CBS Playwriting Fellowship; the Lecomte du Nouy Foundation Award; and the Kenyon Festival Theatre Playwriting Prize. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and an American Theater Hall of Fame member. 

Final Draft joins the Dramatists Guild as a presenting sponsor for the 2024 Awards Night celebration. Final Draft, a Cast & Crew Company, has published Final Draft® software – the number-one selling screenwriting application in the world – for over 30 years. Final Draft is the only screenwriting software that allows writers to fully customize their writing environment, streamlines their process, maximizes productivity, and automatically paginates and formats scripts to industry standards. With Final Draft, writers can focus on what they do best: writing. Used by such industry giants as J.J. Abrams, Bong Joon Ho, Sofia Coppola, Guillermo Del Toro, Issa Rae, and Aaron Sorkin, Final Draft software is the professional’s choice and the entertainment industry standard. In addition to its flagship software product, Final Draft offers the annual Big Break® Contest – a screenwriting competition that launches careers and awards over $80,000 in cash and prizes. Final Draft also offers Final Draft Go for iPhone and iPad, making creativity truly portable. 

Awards Night will take place at Sony Hall, a multi-genre live venue located in the heart of New York City. The space opened in 1938 as the Diamond Horseshoe and quickly became one of the most iconic venues of the vaudeville era. In March 2018, Sony Hall officially opened its doors with much of its original history and dynamic design and décor elements still kept intact. 

​The Dramatists Guild’s other awards, including the Hull-Warriner, Loewe, Horton Foote, Lanford Wilson, and Flora Roberts Awards will be announced at a later date.  Tickets will go on sale in late March. For first access to tickets, please register here: https://zfrmz.com/ELi7AJPpjP1Yi2HkFgH5