The Oppenheimer Award (also known as the Newsday George Oppenheimer Award or the Oppy) was named after the late playwright and Newsday drama critic George Oppenheimer. It was awarded annually to the best New York debut production by an American playwright for a non-musical play. [1] The selection committee has included playwrights Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, James Lapine, and Richard Greenberg. The award carries a $5,000 cash prize. The first award of $1,000, to the play Getting Out by Marsha Norman, was made in 1979, two years after Oppenheimer's death. It was discontinued in 2007.
Crimes of the Heart is a play by American playwright Beth Henley. It is set in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in the mid-20th century. The play won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. In 1986, the play was novelized and released as a book, written by Claudia Reilly.
Marsha Norman is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple and the book for the musical The Bridges of Madison County. She is co-chair of the playwriting department at The Juilliard School.
Will Eno is an American playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. His play, Thom Pain was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2005. His play The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it received a Drama Desk Special Award and was named Best Play on Broadway by USA Today, and best American play of 2014 by The Guardian. His play The Open House was presented Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in 2014 and won the Obie Award for Playwriting as well as other awards, and was on both TIME Magazine and Time Out New York 's Top Ten Plays of 2014.
Richard Greenberg is an American playwright and television writer known for his subversively humorous depictions of middle-class American life. He has had more than 25 plays premiere on and off-broadway in New York City and eight at the South Coast Repertory Theatre, including The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, and Hurrah at Last.
Margaret "Maggie" Edson is an American playwright. She is a recipient of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Wit. She has been a public school teacher since 1992.
Beth Leavel is a Tony Award-winning American stage and screen actress and singer.
MCC Theater is an Off-Broadway theater company located in New York City, founded in 1986 by artistic directors Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey and William Cantler. Blake West joined the company in 2006 as executive director. MCC opened the doors to its new home in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, on January 9, 2019/
Jay Olcutt Sanders is an American actor who has worked in theatre, film, and TV, known for JFK (1991). He frequently appears in plays off-Broadway at The Public Theatre.
Richard John Nelson is an American playwright and librettist. He wrote the books for the Tony Award-winning musicals James Joyce's The Dead, the Broadway version of Chess, as well as the critically acclaimed play cycle The Apple Family Plays.
The New York Drama Critics' Circle is made up of 19 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines and wire services based in the New York City metropolitan area.
Lynne Meadow is an American theatre producer, director and a teacher. She has been the artistic director of the Manhattan Theatre Club since 1972.
Holly Patricia Hunter is an American actress. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2008, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize established in 1978, is for English-language women playwrights. Named for Susan Smith Blackburn (1935–1977), alumna of Smith College, who died of breast cancer.
Katori Hall is an American activist, playwright, journalist, and actress from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall's best known works include Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho, Children of Killers, and The Mountaintop.
Reinaldo Povod was an American playwright.
Baby It's You! is a jukebox musical written by Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott, featuring pop and rock hits of the 1960s, with a special emphasis on songs by the Shirelles and other acts signed to Scepter Records. The show "tells the story of Florence Greenberg and Scepter Records, the label Greenberg started when she signed the Shirelles." After several tryouts and premieres, the show debuted on Broadway in April 2011, directed by Sheldon Epps.
Robert O'Hara is an American playwright and director. He has written Insurrection: Holding History and Bootycandy. Insurrection is a time traveling play exploring racial and sexual identity. Bootycandy is a series of comedic scenes primarily following the character of Sutter, a gay African American man growing from adolescence to manhood. It won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Drama. O’Hara was nominated for the 2020 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for his contribution to Slave Play.
George Seligman Oppenheimer was an American screenwriter, playwright, and journalist.
Why We Have a Body is the first play by Claire Chafee. It premiered in 1993 at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, California, and was labeled a "lesbian play". It was then produced for Off-Broadway theatre and was staged in Canada and Australia. In 2011 it was revived at the Magic Theatre. Chafee received the George Oppenheimer Award for Best Emerging Playwright from Newsday.