Stephen Adly Guirgis to be Honored at 7th Annual 'Mimi' Awards Monday, 11/17

The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust today announced that Stephen Adly Guirgis will be honored with the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award at the Seventh Annual Steinberg Playwright "Mimi" Awards, to be presented on Monday, November 17, 2014 at Lincoln Center Theater. The Mimi Awards promote theater as a vital part of our culture by nurturing American playwrights and encouraging the development and production of new American plays.

"I am beyond humbled to receive this incredibly generous affirmation and support from The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust," Guirgis said. "We live in a world of, 'Take the money and run.' This award is especially meaningful and inspiring to me personally because the message here seems to be, 'Take the money, and STAY.' It's a privilege and an honor to be a worker in our theater community. I only hope to reward your faith in me by doing the best work I can for as long as I'm able and by helping young artists in any way I can. Playwrights and all artists in the theater do need support. I am grateful, proud, blown away and tremendously thankful for everything this award says and gives. I'm staying. Tomorrow starts today."

The Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award is presented biennially to honor and encourage the artistic excellence and achievement of an American playwright whose body of work has made significant contributions to the American theater. The recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award receives a cash award of $200,000.

"There is no one in contemporary American theatre like Stephen Adly Guirgis who brutally captures the largely forgotten and ignored segments of our country's population and brings them to startling life," Chay Yew, a member of the 2014 Advisory Committee and Artistic Director at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, said. "Play after play, Stephen's body of work continues to be audacious, tackling, dissecting and celebrating society's unsung underdogs. His imagination is dazzling; the command of his theatrical language is muscular and assured. Stephen is the poet and champion of our American underclasses."

"Among the many exceptional candidates we considered for the 2014 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, Stephen Adly Guirgis stood out for his fresh, volcanic voice and genuinely original body of work," Paige Evans, 2014 Advisory Committee member and Artistic Director of LCT3, added. "Stephen writes raw, volatile, poetic and wildly funny plays about urban characters trapped in marginal lives. His plays brim with humanity, candor and empathy for the dispossessed characters he so vividly brings to life. "

"The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust is extremely proud to honor Stephen Adly Guirgis with this year's Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award," said William D. Zabel, a member of the Board of Dire