Lucille Lortel - Other Projects

Other Projects

Library of Congress

• Beginning in 1960, Ms. Lortel began a presenting a series of presentations and seminars at the Library of Congress which included: Sean O'Casey's Time To Go; Conrad Aiken's The Coming Forth by Day of Osiris Jones and The Kid; Ionesco's The Shepherd's Chameleon; Edward Albee's Fam and Yam; Anouilh's Medea; Margaret Webster's The Brontes; Mark Van Doren's The Last Days of Lincoln; Donald Hall's An Evening's Frost; Norman Rosten's Come Slowly Eden; Ring Lardner's A Round with Ring; P.J. Barry's Heritage; Robert Glenn's adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Long Valley; Tom Rothfield's Chekov in Love; and in 1984, her highly acclaimed production of Samuel Beckett's new plays Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, and What Where, directed by Alan Schneider, which later she presented at The 1985 Edinburgh Festival and in London.

Broadway

• On Broadway, Ms. Lortel produced Sean O'Casey's I Knock at the Door at the Belasco Theatre (1957), was associate producer of the acclaimed revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire at the St. James Theatre in 1973, and, after its premiere at the White Barn Theatre, produced Lanford Wilson's Angels Fall at the Longacre Theatre where it was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Play (1983). Ms. Lortel co-produced the Broadway production of As Is, which won the Drama Desk Award for Best Play. As Is was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. In 1986 Ms. Lortel received her third Tony Award nomination for Best Play for Athol Fugard's Blood Knot.

• In 1988 Ms. Lortel garnered Tony Award nominations as producer in both the Best Musical and Best Play categories: with Lincoln Center Theatre she co-produced Best Musical nominee Sarafina!,the South African hit about apartheid by Mbongeni Ngema; her production of A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing, which starred Sam Waterston and Robert Prosky, was the Best Play nominee and was honored during its Broadway run to do a special performance at The Library of Congress for an audience that included members of the US Senate and House of Representatives, Secretary of State George P. Schultz, Russian Ambassador Yuri Dubynin and members of the foreign diplomatic corps while the Senate was in session debating ratification of the INF Treaty prior to the Moscow Summit. In November 1988 Ms. Lortel co-produced the London opening of A Walk in the Woods starring Sir Alec Guinness and Edward Herrmann. The international journey of A Walk in the Woods continued when Ms. Lortel took the Broadway company of the play to the Soviet Union where it opened in Moscow at the Pushkin Drama Theatre on May 19, 1989 and then went on to play at the Drama Theatre of Vilnius in Lithuania.

Off-Broadway

• While constantly producing at her own Theatre, Ms. Lortel continued to produce at other theatres Off-Broadway. Highlights include her co-productions of The Beckett Plays at the Harold Clurman Theatre, and Rockaby starring Billie Whitelaw at the new Samuel Beckett Theatre on Theatre Row during the 1983-1984 season. These productions were given a special citation by the New York Drama Critics' Circle. In 1996 Ms. Lortel produced Liliane Montevecchi in Back on the Boulevard at the Martin Kaufman Theatre.

Education

• Ms Lortel established the Lucille Lortel Fund for New Drama at Yale University to support the production of new plays at the Yale Repertory Theater (the fund's premiere production was August Wilson's Fences). The Lucille Lortel Fellowship in Playwriting was started at Brown University in Providence, R.I., in 1996.