The nation's oldest non-profit workshop "dedicated to the development of new playwrights" is honoring Fierstein with its 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony at the New York Marriott Marquis.
Playwright-director Arthur Laurents is the Luncheon Chair, and Fierstein's Catered Affair co-star, Faith Prince, will offer tributes to the honoree.
The annual luncheon salutes an artist who has made an "outstanding artistic contribution to the American theatre." Past honorees include Edward Albee, 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.
Harvey Fierstein won two 1983 Tony Awards — Best Actor in a Play and Best Play — for his groundbreaking opus Torch Song Trilogy. He also won a Best Book of a Musical Tony in 1984 for Jerry Herman’s La Cage aux Folles, and a Best Actor in a Musical Tony for Hairspray. Fierstein's other plays include Safe Sex, Spookhouse and Forget Him. His film credits include "Independence Day," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Bullets Over Broadway," "The Times of Harvey Milk" and "Torch Song Trilogy." He wrote and starred in HBO’s "Tidy Endings," which brought him an ACE Award. Fierstein also published the children's book "The Sissy Duckling." He recently returned to Broadway in the new musical he co-wrote with John Bucchhino, A Catered Affair.
The 59th 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 $300, 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.
