In an intimate corner of the theatre community, luminaries gathered to celebrate the work and careers of Tony Kushner, Judith Light, and rising star Oliver Houser at the DGF Awards Salon March 18.
The Dramatists Guild Foundation, a charitable organization focused on protecting the craft of writing for the theatre by providing playwrights, composers, lyricists, and bookwriters at all stages of their careers, chooses a playwright and an actor each year to receive the Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley Awards, named for the playwright-actor husband-and-wife pair. Past recipient duos include Audra McDonald and Craig Lucas, Viola Davis and Lisa Kron, Linda Lavin and Lynn Nottage, and more.
President and CEO of Jujamcyn Theatres Jordan Roth introduced Kushner in moving remarks about the impact of Kushner’s curiosity, his prowess of language, and Angels in America, a revival of which Roth helped bring to Broadway last season. Playwright Jon Robin Baitz introduced Light, saying that actors such as Light make whole the lives of writers like him.
After a performance of the original song “Judith” by writer Michael R. Jackson, James Jackson Jr., and Sean Patrick Cameron (inspired by remarks made by Light at an NYU gathering where Jackson had been in the audience), DGF presented the inaugural Stephen Schwartz Award. The first recipient, Oliver Houser, is a recent Dramatists Guild fellow and a winner of the ASCAP Foundation Sammy Cahn Award and a SongSpace Grant. His work has been performed and developed at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, the Village Theatre, the Annual National Alliance for Musical Theatre Conference (NAMT), the SoHo Playhouse, the New York Musical Festival (NYMF), the New York International Fringe Festival, the Other Palace Theatre in the U.K.
Flip through photos of the Awards Salon below and learn more about DGF, its mission, and its programs supporting artists at DGF.org:
