New Dramatists Will Honor Seth Gelblum at Annual Luncheon; Keith Carradine and Tonya Pinkins Will Perform

By Andrew Gans
03 Apr 2013

Tonya Pinkins
Tonya Pinkins
Photo by Tess Steinkolk

The Tony-honored playwright development workshop New Dramatists will honor entertainment lawyer and New Dramatists Chairman of the Board Seth Gelblum with the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award at its 64th Annual Spring Luncheon tribute May 21 at the New York Marriott Marquis.

Among those performing tributes will be Tony Award nominee Keith Carradine (Hands on a Hardbody, The Will Rogers Follies) and Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins (Caroline, or Change; Jelly’s Last Jam).

The event co-chairs are Roger Berlind, Roy Furman, and Barry and Fran Weissler.

Each year, New Dramatists salutes an individual "who has made an outstanding artistic contribution to the theatre community." Gelblum has practiced entertainment law in New York for more than 27 years. For the past 15 years, he has been head of the theatre practice at Loeb & Loeb LLP. He also represents producers, writers, and directors for feature film, documentary film and television projects. He has been named New York Entertainment Lawyer of the Year, a New York City Top 100 Super Lawyer and a Hollywood Reporter Top 100 Power Lawyer.

“Seth Gelblum operates in a business of big-world deals and major theatre and film artists and producers, but he’s never lost touch with the aspirations and struggles of every playwright,” said Todd London, artistic director, New Dramatists, in a statement. “In his decades of leadership of New Dramatists, he’s never stopped asking fundamental questions: ‘What do the writers want? What do they need?’ And then he’s worked selflessly to make sure they get those things. He is and will always be the ChairMensch of the New Dramatists’ board. We are lucky to have him and honored to honor him.”

Past luncheon honorees have included Bernadette Peters, Roger Berlind, Julie Taymor, Horton Foote, Edward Albee, Harvey">Harvey Fierstein, Chita Rivera, Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, Julie Andrews, Glenn Close, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, Jerry Herman, Terrence McNally, Barbara Cook, John Kander & Fred Ebb, August Wilson and Gwen Verdon.

The luncheon will be held at the New York Marriott Marquis (1535 Broadway, between 45th and 46th Streets) beginning with a champagne reception at 11:15 AM and ending promptly at 2:30 PM. Tickets are $300 (a portion of which is tax-deductible). For tickets, call New Dramatists director of development, Christie Brown, (212) 757-6960, ext. 5468.