Producer and theatre-owner (and fledgling playwright) Stewart Lane has teemed up with the Drama Desk organization to establish an annual scholarship. The honor will go to a graduating senior of the Drama Program at the F.H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

The scholarship will support a graduating senior who, in addition to maintaining high creative standards, has been deemed by the theatre faculty to be particularly motivated in all aspects of stage work -- including behind-the-scenes activity, as well as acting. The scholarship is a cash award, given to enable the student to pursue a career in the theatre.

Dr. Linda Masson-Kingsley, LaGuardia's Drama Department chair, will present the first annual award to Kara Taitz, who plans on pursuing her education at Tisch School of the Arts' Playwrights Horizons division. Taitz served as a student producer at this year's Spring Drama Festival.

Lane, a co-owner of the dormant Biltmore Theatre, recently collaborated on a satirical comedy with former New York Post theatre journalist Ward Morehouse III. On July 11, If It Were Easy will get a staged reading, directed by Lane, at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. Lane will also be staging A.R. Gurney's The Golden Age at the Actor's Theatre of Nantucket, Aug. 15-Sept. 12.

-- By Sean McGrath and David Lefkowitz