Stephen McKinley Henderson and Ntozake Shange are set to receive two of the highest honors at this year’s Lucille Lortel Awards, which recognize outstanding achievement Off-Broadway.
Henderson, currently on Broadway in “Between Riverside and Crazy,” will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. He previously earned a Lortel Award for his performance during the production’s Off-Broadway run. Henderson’s other select Broadway credits include the 2010 revival of “Fences,” the 2014 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun” and “A Doll’s House, Part 2.”
Shange will posthumously be the Playwrights’ Sidewalk Inductee. The revival of her choreopoem, “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” received seven 2022 Tony Award nominations. The original production of the milestone work bowed on the Main Stem in 1977 and earned a Tony nod for Best Play. Her body of work — which is preserved at the Shange Institute at Barnard College — comprises of plays, novels, children’s books and poetry collections. With this honor, Shange will be inducted onto the Playwrights’ Sidewalk, her name engraved into a bronze star embedded in front of the Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village.
In addition, A.R.T./New York will receive recognition for Outstanding Body of Work, an honor given to an institution.
The 38th annual Lucille Lortel Awards will be held on May 7 at the NYU Skirball Center. The awards are produced by the Off-Broadway League and the Lucille Lortel Theatre, with additional support from TDF.
