Cattaneo, who is also the head of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors’ Lab, is the first dramturg to be honored with the Jones Award, which is presented to a "citizen-of-the-theatre who has demonstrated a significant impact, understanding and affirmation of the craft of playwriting, with a lifetime commitment to the encouragement of the living theatre everywhere."

Presenting Cattaneo with the honor during the 5:30 PM ceremony will be Ohio State University arts and humanities dean Mark Shanda, as well as LCT artistic director Andre Bishop, playwright John Guare (A Free Man of Color, the House of Blue Leaves) and actress Meryl Streep ("The Devil Wears Prada," "Julie and Julia," "Doubt").

Previous recipients of the Jones Award include Andre Bishop, Adrian Hall, Ellen Stewart, Zelda Fichandler, Jules Irving, Lloyd Richards, Gregory Mosher, Robert Whitehead, Jane Alexander, Joseph Papp, Lucille Lortel, Mel Gussow and James Houghton.

Cattaneo previously served as the director of the Playworks Program at the Phoenix Theater during the late 1970's, where she commissioned and developed plays by Wendy Wasserstein (Isn't It Romantic), Mustapha Matura (Meetings) and Christopher Durang (Beyond Therapy). For the Acting Company she created the Chekhov piece Orchards and the Shakespeare-inspired work Love's Fire. She also translated Brecht's Galileo for the Goodman Theatre and Botho Strauss' Big and Little. She is currently on the faculty at Juilliard.

The Margo Jones Award was established in 1961 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and has been administered by the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute at The Ohio State University since 1993.