Steven Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman Win Fred Ebb Award

The Fred Ebb Foundation in association with the Roundabout Theatre Company announced today that Steven Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman have been awarded the second annual Fred Ebb Award.  

The award presentation and cocktail reception will take place on Tuesday, November 28, 2006 at 4:30 PM at The Penthouse Lounge at The American Airlines Theatre (227 West 42nd Street).  Tony winner Debra Monk will present Lutvak and Freedman with their award, and the  reception will feature an all-star performance of three numbers from their current project, Kind Hearts and Coronets.  The award is named in honor of the late award-winning lyricist Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago, Zorba), who passed away in September 2004.

The Fred Ebb Award recognizes excellence in musical theatre songwriting, by a songwriter or songwriting team that has not yet achieved significant commercial success. The award is meant to encourage and support aspiring  songwriters to create new works for the musical theatre. The prize includes a $50,000 award.  The Fred Ebb Foundation is funded by royalties from Ebb's vast catalogue of work.

Lutvak just returned from the Sundance Theater Lab, where his musical Kind Hearts and Coronets was the only musical developed. In one week of April alone, he and his principal collaborator, Robert L. Freedman, won the Kleban Award; their musical Kind Hearts and Coronets was presented as part of the Breaking Ground Series at the Huntington Theater in Boston. In January, their musical, Campaign Of The Century, won the California Musical Theater Competition from the Beverly Hills Theater Guild. Mad Hot Ballroom, the film for which Lutvak wrote the title song, has become the 9th most successful documentary of all time. He was the first winner of the Johnny Mercer Emerging American Songwriter Award, has won two awards from the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation, a grant from the NEA, and an ASCAP Award  annually since 1984.

Freedman's other writing credits include the television films "Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows" (Emmy and Writers Guild nominations), Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (Writers Guild nomination), What Makes A Family (Humanitas Finalist, GLAAD Award), HBO's "A Deadly Secret" (Writers Guild Award), "Honor Thy Mother" (Edgar nomination), and "Murder In The Hamptons," the highest rated basic cable movie of the year.

For more information, please visit www.fredebbfoundation.org.

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