Photo Coverage: Broadway's Future is Female! Go Inside the 9th Annual Lilly Awards!

The 9th Annual Lilly Awards Ceremony, which honours the accomplishments of women working in the American theatre, just took place last night, May 21st, 2018, at the Minetta Lane Theatre.

This year's honorees included celebrated playwright and performer Eve Ensler, the creator of worldwide sensation The Vagina Monologues and In the Body of the World; Carole Rothman, artistic director and co-founder of Second Stage Theatre company; actress and activist Lori Myers, creator of the advocacy group Not in Our House that took down Profiles Theater in Chicago and took on the fact of sexual harassment and assault in theatre, years before it became front page news; P. Carl who gave a voice to theatre makers with Howlround; the amazing dance theatre team of Monica Bill Barnes; and Kelda Roys, the candidate for Governor of Wisconsin whose campaign ad went viral when her new born needed to breastfeed. We will, as always, have our surprise Miss Lilly award for a man who has made an outsized contribution to women in the theatre. That honor came complete with tiara, sash and bouquet of lilies, of course.

These winners are people who fight back, stand up, speak loudly, and demand more for women. They represent the initiatives and programs that The Lilly Awards Foundation pursues: our years of work on sexual harassment and current push for an information escrow database to assist survivors in finding corroboration to win their cases; our Childcare Initiative (the Family Residency with SPACE on Ryder Farm and Fund at New Dramatists); our Lorraine Hansberry Initiative and Memorial; and The National Count, the largest and only ongoing study of who is being produced in the American Theatre, in terms of gender and race. We will be previewing the new instalment of The National Count that will tell us where we were, where we are and how much father we need to go.

Also presented were the New York Women's Foundation Directing Apprenticeship Award, the Stacey Mindich 'Go Write a Play' Award to a playwright, and the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award to a theatre designer.

The Lilly Awards were started in the spring of 2010 by Julia Jordan, Marsha Norman, and Theresa Rebeck to honor the work of women in the American Theater and advocate for gender parity. They are named for Lillian Hellman, a pioneering American playwright who famously said "You need to write like the devil and act like one too when necessary." Previous winners include Mary Rogers, Danai Gurira, Dominique Morisseau, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Jeanine Tesori, Liesl Tommy, Martyna Majok, Anne Kauffman, Sarah Ruhl, Kristin Chenoweth, Annie Baker, Susan Stroman, Lynn Ahrens, Tina Fallon, Martha Plimpton, Julie Taymor, Katori Hall, Tina Howe, Estelle Parsons, Lynne Meadow, Ntozake Shange, Jessica Hecht, and Lois Smith, among others.

For more information on The Lilly Awards, visit www.thelillyawards.org.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride