NEW YORK CITY: The Dramatists Guild Fund has named Audra McDonald and Craig Lucas as the 2016 recipients of the Madge Evans and Sidney Kingsley Award, which were presented at a ceremony on Monday. The award goes to a playwright and an actor for their body of work, and each winner received a cash prize of $10,000.
Adam Guettel, who collaborated with Lucas on Light in the Piazza, presented the award to Lucas before they both attended the anniversary concert of the musical at Lincoln Center. Terrence McNally was set to present McDonald with the award, but she was unable to attend the ceremony as she was in rehearsal for Shuffle Along, set to open on Broadway on April 28. Producer Tom Kirdahy accepted the award on her behalf.
McDonald is the recipient of six Tony Awards for her roles in Carousel, Ragtime, Master Class, A Raisin in the Sun, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. She also appeared on television in “Private Practice” and reprised her role in Raisin in the Sun on television, earning an Emmy Award. She also received two Grammy Awards for opera and classical music recordings. She studied at Juilliard.
Lucas’s plays include Missing Persons, Reckless, Blue Window, Reckless, and Ode to Joy, among others. His play Prelude to a Kiss received an Obie Award, a Tony Award nomination, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He received a Steinberg Award for The Singing Forest. His musical credits include the book for The Light in the Piazza, the libretto for Three Postcards, and the libretto for Orpheus in Love, among others.
The Dramatists Guild Fund is the public charity arm of the Dramatists Guild of America, with a mission to aid writers in the theatre, fund nonprofit theatres producing contemporary American works, and to heighten awareness and appreciation of the theatre arts across the country.
