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.
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“The drama critic on your paper said my chablis-tinted hair was like a soft halo over wide set, inviting eyes, and my mouth, my mouth was a lush tunnel through which golden notes came.”
—Samuel Fuller (b. 1911)
“It’s true, as Marya Mannes says: “No one believes [a woman’s] time to be sacred. A man at his desk in a room with a closed door is a man at work. A woman at a desk in any room is available.””
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“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)
“Both Socrates and Jesus were outstanding teachers; both of them urged and practiced great simplicity of life; both were regarded as traitors to the religion of their community; neither of them wrote anything; both of them were executed; and both have become the subject of traditions that are difficult or impossible to harmonize.”
—Jaroslav Pelikan (b. 1932)
“Mr. [John] Barrymore’s smile was the smile of an actor who hates actors, and who knows that he is going to kill two or three before the play is over. I am not an actor-killer, but I like my Hamlets to dislike actors, if you know what I mean, and I think you don’t.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence?”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 21:15.
A King, said of David who pretends to be mad.