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:
“Only in the problem play is there any real drama, because drama is no mere setting up of the camera to nature: it is the presentation in parable of the conflict between Man’s will and his environment: in a word, of problem.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“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)
“The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
—Ilka Chase (1905–1978)
“I’m notorious for giving a bad interview. I’m an actor and I can’t help but feel I’m boring when I’m on as myself.”
—Rock Hudson (1925–1985)
“PLAYING SHOULD BE FUN! In our great eagerness to teach our children we studiously look for “educational” toys, games with built-in lessons, books with a “message.” Often these “tools” are less interesting and stimulating than the child’s natural curiosity and playfulness. Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning.”
—Joanne E. Oppenheim (20th century)