Lucille Lortel Foundation
The Lucille Lortel Foundation was established by Lucille Lortel, “the Queen of Off-Broadway.” Among her more than 500 productions are the landmark revival of Brecht/Weill’s The Threepenny Opera which is credited for putting Off-Broadway on the map; Brecht on Brecht; Jean Genet’s The Balcony; the American premiere of Athol Fugard’s The Blood Knot; Sean O’Casey’s Cock-A-Doodle Dandy; Tom Cole’s Medal of Honor Rag; Marsha Norman’s Getting Out; Mbongemi Ngema’s Woza Albert!; and Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, as well as twenty seasons as artistic director of the ANTA Matinee Series. She produced Lee Blessing’s A Walk in the Woods on Broadway, then presented it at the Library of Congress, and co-produced the West End production starring Sir Alec Guinness and Edward Herrmann. At the height of the Cold War, she took A Walk in the Woods to Moscow, with the original Broadway cast.
Miss Lortel received numerous theatrical awards and honors, including the first Margo Jones Award; the first Lee Strasberg Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Award; induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame (1990); the Christophers’ Life Achievement Award and, two days later, the Kennedy Center Medallion from the American College Theatre Festival; an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from CUNY; she was one of the first individuals to be inducted into the Greenwich Village Hall of Fame.
In recognition of her tireless devotion to the Off-Broadway community, the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers created the annual Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway in her honor, awarded annually since 1986. The 1993 publication of Lucille Lortel: A Bio-Bibliography was celebrated at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, where a permanent tribute to her career is on display in the Lucille Lortel Room at the Theatre on Film and Tape Archives (the world’s foremost collection of live theatre performances on video).
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