The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play is presented by the Drama Desk, a committee of New York City theatre critics, writers, and editors. It honors performances by actors in supporting roles in productions staged on Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, and for legitimate not-for-profit theaters.
It was not until the 21st Annual Drama Desk Awards in 1975 that a specific category for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play was created. That year's recipient was Frank Langella in Seascape, who won over Louis Beachner in The National Health, Larry Blyden in Absurd Person Singular, David Dukes in Love for Love and Rules of the Game, Philip Locke in Sherlock Holmes, and Richard Williams in Black Picture Show.
Famous quotes containing the words drama, desk, award, outstanding, actor and/or play:
“Life’s so ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional. Exceptional talent, power, social position, wealth.... Drama begins where there’s freedom of choice. And freedom of choice begins when social or psychological conditions are exceptional. That’s why the inhabitants of imaginative literature have always been recruited from the pages of Who’s Who.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“We must rest here, for this is where the teacher comes.
On his desk stands a vase of tears.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“We use important words too frequently and they lose value; for instance, charm and great. An actor or musician often is proclaimed great when we really mean he is outstanding.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)
“While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy “Man”,
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)