Seventeen awards will be given, including a Lifetime Achievement Award to composer Mary Rodgers. Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth, currently back on Broadway in Promises, Promises, will also be honored, and Gloria Steinem will give an Invocation.

Presenters will be announced shortly.

The committee who created the awards comprises Julie Crosby, John Eisner, Gary Garrison, Tina Howe, Julia Jordan, Marsha Norman, Theresa Rebeck, Susan Rose and Tim Sanford and the Dramatists Guild of America. Their mission is "to celebrate the work of outstanding, successful and up-and-coming women playwrights, directors, designers and advocates in the theater."

About once interviewing Lillian Hellman, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman stated, "She warned me it was going to be tough to be a woman working in the theater. She said I'd need to  write like the devil and also act like one when necessary.   She was right on all counts.  This party is just to remind everybody that there are so many great women working in the theatre now. In New York alone, 51 plays this year, on Broadway and off, were written by women.  And the work is stunning.  I wish Ms. Hellman could see this."