Presented by the Village Voice, the annual event will be produced and directed by Eileen Phelan. Michael Feingold, the chief theatre critic of the Village Voice, will chair the Obie Awards committee. He will be joined by Voice critic Alexis Soloski as well as Variety critic Mark Blankenship; Bloomberg News editor and critic Jeremy Gerard; playwright-director Robert O'Hara (2007 Obie winner for In the Continuum); set designer Neil Patel (twice an Obie winner for sustained excellence of design); and Time Out New York/New York Sun critic Helen Shaw. Clint Allen will serve as secretary to the committee.
The Obie Awards were created in 1955 by Jerry Tallmer. Past recipients include Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, William Hurt, Morgan Freeman, Mos Def, Amy Irving, Kevin Kline, Nathan Lane, Olympia Dukakis, Robert Duvall, Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, Kathy Bates, James Earl Jones, Felicity Huffman and Harvey Fierstein, among others.