The nation's oldest non-profit workshop "dedicated to the development of new playwrights" is honoring Albee with its 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony at the New York Marriott Marquis.

The annual luncheon salutes an artist who has made an "outstanding artistic contribution to the American theatre." Past honorees include Chita Rivera, George C. Wolfe, Meryl Streep, Barbara Cook, Angela Lansbury, Julie Andrews, Glenn Close, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Neil Simon, Jerry Herman, Stephen Sondheim, August Wilson, Gwen Verdon, Terrence McNally and Arthur Miller.

Deuce's Marian Seldes, a frequent actor in Albee's plays, is the Chairperson for the event. Honorary chairs include producers Elizabeth I. McCann and Daryl Roth, Abby Von Nostrand of Samuel French Inc. and Gerald Schoenfeld and Philip J. Smith of The Shubert Organization.

Playwright Edward Albee won Best Play Tony Awards for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?. He was also Tony nominated for The Ballad of the Sad Café, Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance and Seascape. Albee is also the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes, the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts.

The 58th Annual Benefit Luncheon will be held in the Broadway Ballroom of the New York Marriott Marquis, located in New York at 1535 Broadway. Tickets, priced at $250, are available by calling (212) 757-6960. Founded in 1949 by Michaela O'Harra in association with Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Moss Hart, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, New Dramatists has fostered the works of Paula Vogel, August Wilson, William Inge, Paddy Chayefsky, John Guare, John Patrick Shanley, Emily Mann and Suzan-Lori Parks. New Dramatists was the recipient of a special Tony Award for Excellence in Theatre in 2001, and its playwrights have garnered 14 Pulitzers, 20 Tony Awards, 63 Obie Awards and 17 New York Drama Critics Circle Awards.