Estelle Parsons to Receive Lifetime Achievement Obie Award on 5/19

The Village Voice, the nation's largest alternative weekly newspaper, announced today that the Lifetime Achievement Award Obie will go to the esteemed ESTELLE PARSONS. The OBIE Awards Ceremony Will Be Co-hosted by Tamara Tunie and Hamish Linklater, and presented by Betsy Aidem, Harvey Fierstein, Lena Hall, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Andy Karl , David Bar Katz, Cristin Milioti , Kelli O'Hara, Lily Rabe and Stephen Trask.

Estelle is most widely known for her Academy Award-winning performance in Bonnie and Clyde and her 10 years as Mother Bev on the hit sitcom "Roseanne." In the theater, she is known for her portrayal of the tyrannical eighth grade teacher in Roberto Athayde's classic about totalitarian power, Miss Margarida's Way, which she performed on Broadway, all over the United States and in London, Dublin, Turkey and Australia. She has appeared in plays by the great writers of our time, including Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Dario Fo, Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, Paul Zindel and Horton Foote. Estelle starred in August: Osage County by Tracy Letts on Broadway for a year and on the road for a year. Most recently Estelle was seen in The Velocity of Autumn by Eric Coble (2014 Tony, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Award nominations), Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire and the George & Ira Gershwin musical, Nice Work If You Can Get It with Matthew Broderick. In 2012, she was directed by Neil LaBute in Marco Calvani's Things of This World. As a director, she created the New York Shakespeare Festival Players for Joseph Papp in the 1980s. For two seasons, they performed Shakespeare on Broadway for New York City school students and their families in an effort to develop a multicultural audience for New York. She also directed Al Pacino in Oscar Wilde's Salome: the Reading on Broadway. Estelle Parsons is a member of The Actors Studio and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2004.

Additional exciting Obie Awards Ceremony news is the announcement of a live performance by the acclaimed fresh musical FUN HOME. From four-time Tony Award-nominated composer Jeanine Tesori and Tony-nominee Lisa Kron FUN HOME is a fresh, daring new musical based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. When her father dies unexpectedly, graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile, brilliant, one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present, Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family's Bechdel Funeral Home, her growing understanding of her own sexuality and the looming, unanswerable questions about her father's hidden desires. Directed by Sam Gold, Fun Home is a groundbreaking world-premiere musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes.

Tickets will are on sale now at obies.villagevoice.com for the 59th Annual Obie Awards on Monday, May 19, 2014, at Webster Hall in the East Village, 125 East 11th Street. Online box office will close on Monday, May 19th at midnight and be available at the event doors that evening.

The Village Voice has independently produced and created such celebrated events as Choice Eats, Obies Awards, 4Knots Music Festival, Choice Streets, Brooklyn Pour, Holiday Spirits well as the most anticipated issues and guides of the year including the annual Pazz and Jop music poll, Best of NYC, and its Spring, Summer, and Fall Preview guides. The Village Voice is New York's most influential must-read alternative newspaper in print and online. For more information on the Voice or its events, please visit us online at www.villagevoice.com .

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos