2025 Lucille Lortel Special Award Recipients Include Playwright Alice Childress
(Photo c/o Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, NYPL)
The Lucille Lortel Awards, the New York theater award that exclusively honors off-Broadway, have announced Special Award recipients for 2025.
Playwright Alice Childress (1916-1994) will be posthumously inducted onto the Playwrights’ Sidewalk. Raised during the Harlem Renaissance, Childress became the first African-American woman to have a professionally produced play in New York in 1952 with Gold Through the Trees. Her acclaimed 1955 play Trouble in Mind received a revival on Broadway in 2021 and was nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Play.
New Federal Theatre will be recognized for their outstanding body of work. Founded in 1970 by Woodie King Jr., the NFT champions Black and multicultural artists and has fostered the careers of numerous notable figures, including Denzel Washington and Issa Rae.
Lastly, Carol Fishman, the general manager of Playwrights Horizons, will be honored with the Edith Oliver Service to Off-Broadway Award. Fishman has worked with Second Stage Theater and Playwrights Horizons on landmark productions including A Strange Loop and Clybourne Park.
Nominations for the 40th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards will be announced on April 2, with the Lucille Lortel Awards themselves to take place on May 4. The voting committee comprises representatives of the Off-Broadway League, Actors’ Equity Association, Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, United Scenic Artists, the Lucille Lortel Theatre, in addition to theater journalists, academics and other off-Broadway professionals.