The national Corporate Theatre Fund (NCTF) holds its Fifth Annual “Chairman’s Awards” Gala at the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, April 30.

Benefiting NCTF’s members, comprising “eleven of our nation’s finest regional theatre companies,” the Chairman’s Awards will be hosted by master of ceremonies Billy Crudup.

Among the celebrities scheduled to attend the regional theatre benefit are Kathleen Chalfant, Marian Seldes, Helen Stenborg, Wendy Wasserstein and members of the Broadway Kids, who will perform.

NCTF board honorary chair Hal Holbrook (Lifetime Achievement Award) is one of the celebrities and companies to be honored at The Lighthouse at Pier 61 (Chelsea Piers). Others include actress Annette Bening (2001 Artist Award), Citigroup (Corporate Leadership Award) and the “big five” accounting firms, Arthur Andersen, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The five accounting firms are being recognized for generously supporting “NCTF and its member theatres with financial backing and executives participation on regional and national boards of directors” for many years.

In a prepared statement the NCTF profiles itself as a “‘pipeline’ to Broadway” that has furthered the development of such works as The Globe Theatre’s The Full Monty, The Goodman Theatre’s Tony-winning revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the Mark Taper Forum’s production of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning Angels in America and the Long Wharf Theatre’s production of Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize winning Wit. For information on NCTF visit www.nctf.org.

—By Murdoch McBride