New Dramatists Luncheon to Honor INDECENT's Daryl Roth and Paula Vogel

New Dramatists, Tony Honor recipient and the nation's premier playwright development laboratory, will honor 10-time Tony Award-winning producer Daryl Roth and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel with their 2017 Distinguished Achievement Awards at its 68th Annual Spring Luncheon tribute. The event will be held Tuesday, May 16 at the New York Marriott Marquis.

"We are profoundly fortunate that these two outstanding theatre professionals have committed their careers to this art form," says Emily Morse, Artistic Director of New Dramatists. "We are grateful that their paths crossed somewhere around 1997, a fateful encounter that began a sustained and fruitful relationship between an influential American Playwright and a visionary new play Producer. In addition to celebrating their individual and combined successes, honoring them at this year's annual Luncheon tells the story of New Dramatists in a particular way. The longevity of their partnership echoes the founding of New Dramatists; it speaks to our present as more playwrights partner with creative producers to forge sustainable models for future new play productions. Paula and Daryl both lead by example, and it is a tremendous honor to recognize them and their contributions to our field in the company of our vital and supportive New Dramatists community."

Each year, New Dramatists salutes individuals who have made an outstanding artistic contribution to the theatre community. Past luncheon honorees include Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Susan Stroman, Seth Gelblum, Bernadette Peters, Roger Berlind, Julie Taymor, Horton Foote, 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, and Gwen Verdon.

New Dramatists pursues a singular mission: to provide playwrights with time, space and resources in the company of gifted peers to create work, realize their artistic potential, and make lasting contributions to the theatre. Founded in 1949 by Michaela O'Harra in association with Howard Lindsay, Richard Rodgers, Russel Crouse, Oscar Hammerstein II, John Golden, Moss Hart, Maxwell Anderson, John Wharton, Robert E. Sherwood and Elmer Rice, New Dramatists is one of the country's leading playwright centers and a nationally recognized new play laboratory. In the 68 years since our founding, over 600 New Dramatists have passed through our doors, creating work that has laid the foundation for contemporary American dramatic literature. Alumni include Robert Anderson, Kia Corthron, Nilo Cruz, Horton Foote, Richard Foreman, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, Quiara Alegría Hudes, David Lindsay-Abaire, Eduardo Machado, Donald Margulies, Joe Masteroff, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, John Patrick Shanley, Sarah Ruhl, Mac Wellman, August Wilson, Doug Wright, and many more. The collective impact of New Dramatists' playwrights on the field is evident and palpable. Current playwrights and alumni have won 19 Pulitzers (the most recent Prize awarded to alum Stephen Adly Guirgis for Between Riverside and Crazy), 25 Tonys, 76 OBIEs, 17 Drama Desk Awards, 6 MacArthur Fellowships, and 13 Susan Smith Blackburn Awards. New Dramatists itself received a Ross Wetzsteon Award for excellence at the 2005 OBIEs and a 2001 Tony Honor for "blessing the theatre with new and exceptional works that have assured both a rich theatrical heritage and future for the American Theatre."

The luncheon will be held at the New York Marriott Marquis (1535 Broadway, between 45th and 46th Streets) on Tuesday, May 16 beginning with a champagne reception at 11:15AM and ending promptly at 2:30PM. Tickets are $350 (a portion of which is tax-deductible). For tickets, visit newdramatists.org/luncheon or call New Dramatists' director of development, Christie Brown, (212) 757-6960 ext. 5468.

ABOUT THE HONOREES:

Daryl Roth is honored to hold the singular distinction of producing seven Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive; Anna in the Tropics; August: Osage County (2008 Tony Award); Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award); Proof (2001 Tony Award); Edward Albee's Three Tall Women; and Wit. This season, she is producing the Broadway premiere of Paula Vogel's Indecent, bringing their collaboration full circle. The proud recipient of ten Tony Awards and London's Olivier Award, her over 100 award winning productions both on and off Broadway include: The Tony and Olivier Award winning Kinky Boots (Broadway, U.S. Tour, London, Toronto, Australia); Bea Arthur on Broadway; Buyer and Cellar; Caroline, or Change; A Catered Affair; Closer Than Ever; The Crucible; Curtains; The Divine Sister; Driving Miss Daisy; Fela!; The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002 Tony Award); Harlem Song; The Humans (2016 Tony Award); A Little Night Music; Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron's Love, Loss, and What I Wore; The Normal Heart (2011 Tony Award); Old Wicked Songs; One Man, Two Guvnors; Our Lady of 121st Street; The Play About the Baby; A Raisin in the Sun (2014 Tony Award); Shuffle Along; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife; The Temperamentals; Thurgood; Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; A View from the Bridge (2016 Tony);War Horse (2011 Tony Award); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Wiesenthal; The Year of Magical Thinking; and De La Guarda, which ran for 7 years as the inaugural production at the Daryl Roth Theatre, a landmark building in Manhattan's Union Square. Upcoming Broadway productions include Groundhog Day; Hello, Dolly; Present Laughter; and Sunset Boulevard. Currently in development: a new musical Between the Lines, based on the best-selling novel by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer, and a film adaptation of Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife. Film credits include My Dog: An Unconditional Love Story a documentary exploring the relationships of well-known New Yorkers and their dogs. Ms. Roth is an Honorary Trustee for Lincoln Center Theatre and was twice included in Crain's "100 Most Influential Women in Business." Recent honors include: The Order of the Golden Sphinx Award from The Harvard Hasty Pudding Institute; New York Living Landmarks Award; Humanitarian Award from the Women's Division and Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Broadway Association Visionary Leader Award; Family Equality Council Family Award; Live Out Loud Humanitarian Award; and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. Visit www.DarylRothProductions.com.

Paula Vogel's most recent project is Indecent, a play commissioned by Oregon Shakespeare Festival's American Revolutions and Yale Repertory Theatre. In close collaboration with director Rebecca Taichman, and co-produced by La Jolla Playhouse, Indecent was developed at the Sundance Theatre Lab in 2013. It has been produced at Yale Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse in Fall 2015. Having opened at the Vineyard Theatre in May 2016, it will transfer to Broadway in April 2017. Don Juan Comes Home From Iraq, her previous play, was written for the Wilma Company in Philadelphia. With director Blanka Zizka and company members, Paula Vogel conducted interviews with veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, and received funding from the Pew Charitable Trust and Independence Foundation to conduct a year long workshop with veterans in Philadelphia. Her play How I Learned To Drive received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel Prize, Drama Desk, Outer Critics and New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play, as well as winning her second OBIE. Most recently it was produced in Mandarin in Beijing. Other plays include the Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot'n'throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas. In 2004-5 she was playwright in residence at The Signature Theatre. Theatre Communications Group has published four books of her work. In addition, Paula Vogel continues her "bootcamps," playwriting intensives, with community organizations, theatre companies, subscribers and writers across the globe. Her most recent teaching was at Sewanee, Shanghai Theatre Academy and Nanjing University; her upcoming teaching includes University of Texas in Austin, the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis and workshops for neighborhood residents near The Vineyard Theatre in New York. Most recent awards include the American Theatre Hall of Fame, Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lily's, the William Inge and the 2015 Thornton Wilder. She is honored to have 3 awards dedicated to emerging playwrights in her name: The Paula Vogel Award from The American College Theatre Festival, the Paula Vogel Award given annually by the Vineyard Theatre, and the recent Paula Vogel Mentor's Award by Young Playwrights of Philadelphia. From 1984 to 2008, Paula Vogel founded and ran the playwriting program at Brown University; during that time she started a theatre workshop for women in Maximum Security at the Adults Correction Institute in Cranston, Rhode Island. It continues to this day, sponsored by the Pembroke Center for Women at Brown University. From 2008-2012 she was the O'Neill Chair at Yale School of Drama. She now writes and lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.