NEW DRAMATISTS Honors Horton Foote at 60th Annual Spring Luncheon 5/19

NEW DRAMATISTS, Tony Honor recipient and the nation's premiere playwright development workshop, proudly announces that the late Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Horton Foote will be honored with their 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award at its 60th Annual Spring Luncheon tribute, to be held Tuesday, May 19th at the New York Marriott Marquis. New Dramatists 60th Annual Spring Luncheon has been underwritten by Bob Boyett.

Each year, New Dramatists salutes an individual who has made an outstanding artistic contribution to the American theatre. As a playwright, Horton Foote is celebrated for his singular and deeply American body of work, which includes The Trip to Bountiful, the Pulitzer-winning Young Man from Atlanta, as well as this season's Dividing The Estate, among many others. He is also renowned for his career as a screenwriter, with works as diverse as his Oscar-winning adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird; Tender Mercies, which garnered an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay; and the film version of his play The Trip to Bountiful, which was recognized with Horton's third Oscar nomination.

"While this year marks the 60th year for the New Dramatists luncheon, this will be the first year that we honor an artist posthumously," says New Dramatists Artistic Director Todd London "In the fall, Mr. Foote accepted our invitation to be this year's honoree. Though we had not announced Mr. Foote as our honoree by the time of his passing, our board felt strongly about moving forward with the tribute. We are thrilled that members of Foote's family as well as members of his extended theatre family will be on hand to celebrate the life and career of this extraordinary American artist."

Past luncheon honorees have included Edward Albee, Harvey Fierstein, Chita Rivera, Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, Julie Andrews, Glenn Close, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, Jerry Herman, Terrence McNally, Barbara Cook, John Kander & Fred Ebb, August Wilson, George C. Wolfe and Gwen Verdon.

The luncheon will be held at the New York Marriott Marquis (1535 Broadway, between 45th and 46th Streets) on Tuesday, May 19th, beginning with a champagne reception at 11:15 AM and ending at 2:30 PM. Tickets are $300 (a portion of which is tax-deductible). For tickets, call (212) 757-6960.

New Dramatists is dedicated to the playwright, and pursues a singular mission: to find gifted playwrights and give them the time, space, and tools to develop their craft, so that they may fulfill their potential and make lasting contributions to the theatre. Regarded as a national leader in playwright support and advocacy, New Dramatists has remained a pioneer in the field of new play development since our inception in 1949. We offer our company of 50 playwrights a home base and self-guided laboratory for seven years, free of charge, in the company of a gifted community of peers. New Dramatists' alumni include some of the most revered and influential playwrights of our time: Robert Anderson, Kia Corthron, Nilo Cruz, Horton Foote, Richard Foreman, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, David Lindsay-Abaire, Eduardo Machado, Donald Margulies, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, John Patrick Shanley, Mac Wellman, August Wilson, Doug Wright, and many more. Current playwrights and alumni have won 15 Pulitzers (including 7 of the last 10), 24 Tonys®, 68 Obies, 17 Drama Desk Awards, 4 MacArthur Fellowships, and 12 Susan Smith Blackburn Awards. New Dramatists itself is the recipient of a 2001 Tony Honor and a 2005 Obie Award, in recognition that our writers are, as our Tony put it, "blessing" the future of the American theatre.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.