James C. Nicola & Jeffrey Horowitz to Receive Lifetime Achievement Obie Awards

The American Theatre Wing and The Village Voice announce that Artistic Director of New York Theatre Workshop, James C. Nicola, and Artistic Director and founder of Theatre For A New Audience, Jeffrey Horowitz, will receive special Obie Awards for Lifetime Achievement at the 64th Annual Obie Awards, which will be held on Monday, May 20, 2019 at Terminal 5 (610 West 56th Street). Tickets to the 2019 Obie Awards are now available via www.ObieAwards.com.

As was previously announced, Golden Globe winning "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" creator and star Rachel Bloom will host the 64th Annual Obie Awards. The judges' panel for the 64th Annual Obie Awards, chaired as in previous years by longtime Village Voice critic Michael Feingold, includes Obie-winning director Arin Arbus, Obie-winning scenic designer Rachel Hauck, Obie-winning scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez, two-time Obie-winning playwright Rajiv Joseph, Obie-winning actress Kecia Lewis, and New York Stage Review theater critic Jesse Oxfeld.

Audible, the Presenting Sponsor of the 2019 Obie Awards announced the Minetta Lane Theatre as its creative home for live performances in New York last year, and Billy Crudup's performance of Harry Clarke, the company's inaugural live show at the Minetta Lane, won an Obie Award in 2018.

Nickelodeon is a sustaining sponsor of the 2019 Obie Awards.

For more information, visit www.ObieAwards.com.

James C. Nicola has been the Artistic Director of New York Theatre Workshop since 1988. Under his guidance, NYTW has remained steadfast to its founding commitment of nurturing emerging, mid-career and established theatre artists and promoting collaboration and bold experimentation with theatrical forms. Mr. Nicola initiated an extensive series of workshop opportunities that have continued for 25 years, including summer residencies and fellowships for artists representing a broad spectrum of cultures and backgrounds. He forged a unique community of theatre artists, the Usual Suspects, which now boasts over 600 members and whose work has shaped our very idea of what theatre can be. This group of writers, directors, designers and actors form the core of NYTW's artist development activities. As Artistic Director, Mr. Nicola has been instrumental in the development of many NYTW productions, including Jonathan Larson's Rent; Tony Kushner's Slavs! andHomebody/Kabul; Doug Wright's Quills; Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde; Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told andValhalla; Martha Clarke's Vienna: Lusthaus; Will Power's The Seven and Fetch Clay, Make Man; Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, Far Away, A Number and Love and Information; Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's Aftermath; Rick Elice's Peter and the Starcatcher; Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová and Enda Walsh's Once; David Bowie and Enda Walsh's Lazarus; Dael Orlandersmith's The Gimmick and Forever; Anaïs Mitchell's Hadestown; Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me; Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play; Sam Gold's production of Othello; and eight productions directed by Ivo van Hove. Before joining NYTW, Mr. Nicola spent seven years at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., first as a National Endowment for the Arts Directing Fellow and later as a Producing Associate. From 1975 to 1980, Mr. Nicola was a Casting Coordinator for the New York Shakespeare Festival where he developed his continuing, passionate commitment to new voices in the theatre. Mr. Nicola fueled his love of theatre during the early 1970s, when he was an Assistant Director at The Young Vic/National Theatre of Great Britain and an Assistant Stage Manager at London's Royal Court Theatre. Mr. Nicola is a graduate of Tufts University and is a recipient of Tufts University's P.T. Barnum Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, and the 2015 Miss Lilly Award for supporting women in theater.

Jeffrey Horowitz began his career in theatre as an actor and has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. Horowitz graduated Cum Laude from the University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He then trained as an actor for three years at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1979, he founded Theatre for a New Audience, whose cornerstone is Shakespeare. Horowitz has produced twenty-four of Shakespeare's plays, Greek, Jacobean and Italian classical drama and contemporary classics by Harley Granville-Barker and Edward Bond. He has also commissioned and developed new plays from authors such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Elizabeth Swados. Under his leadership, Theatre for a New Audience has grown from a touring theatre into one of New York's leading classical theatres. He has nurtured relationships with many of the finest American and European directors including JoAnne Akaliatis, Peter Brook, Karin Coonrod, Ron Daniels, William Gaskill, Sir Peter Hall, Doug Hughes, Dalia Ibelhauptaite, Barry Kyle, Michael Langham, Mark Rylance, Bartlett Sher, Julie Taymor and Robert Woodruff. The work of artists affiliated with Theatre for a New Audience has won many theatre awards and nominations, including the Lortel, Drama Desk, Drama League, Obie and Tony. Several of Theatre for a New Audience's productions have gone on to a future life: Green Bird directed by Julie Taymor opened on Broadway April 2000; both The Tempest and Titus Andronicus, also directed by Taymor and produced by Theatre for a New Audience have been made into films starring Helen Mirren, Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. In October 2001, Theatre for a New Audience became the first American theatre to be invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the RSC's Other Place in Stratford. The Theatre has, under Horowitz' leadership, been committed to programs of education and access. For adult audiences, authors and intellectuals such as Robert Caro, Stanley Kauffmann, Tony Kushner, Robert MacNeil and Susan Sontag and scholars such as David Kastan and James Shapiro lead spirited symposia, in conjunction with productions. For students, Theatre for a New Audience built the largest programs for introducing Shakespeare in the New York City Public Schools. The programs are now nationally recognized. Several thousand students take part each year and 122,000 young people have been served since the program began in 1984. Horowitz has served on the Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts and on the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group. He is currently on the Advisory Board of The Shakespeare Society, the Artistic Directorate of London's Globe Theatre and the Artistic Advisor to the Shakespeare Globe Centre (USA). He has participated in numerous panels on Shakespeare's plays, including most recently, Symposia at The Public Theater, SSD&C, the Brooklyn Academy Of Music and ABC's World News Tonight. For his work with Theatre for a New Audience, he has been awarded The Acting Company's John Houseman Award and the Breukelein Institute's Gaudium Award.

Photo Credit: Gerry Goodstein