Theatre Museum Awards to Bursty, Brantley

The Theatre Museum will honor Ellen Burstyn for lifetime achievement and winners of the 2007 Awards for Excellence on Monday, October 29 at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, New York City.  The evening will include cocktails, dinner buffet and staged performances by Broadway artists.

The Theatre Museum will honor Ellen Burstyn for lifetime achievement as more than a stage, film and television actress.  Burstyn was the first woman to be elected president of Actor's Equity Association (1982-85), served for six years as artistic director of the Actors Studio and continues there as co-president with Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel.  In 1975, for best actress, she won a Tony Award for Bernard Slade's Same Time Next Year and an Academy Award for Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

For Theatre Arts Education, The Theatre Museum will honor both an individual and an institution.  Tony Award winner James Naughton will present The Theatre Museum Award for Excellence in Individual Achievement to Carmen de Lavallade, actor, dancer and choreographer, who is being recognized for her work as a professor at Yale University, director of Adelphi University's Dance Department and teacher for performing arts groups including the Julliard Dance Department, the American Dance Festival and the New Ballet School.

Emmy Award winner Pia Lindstrom will present Arts Horizons, a 29-year-old cultural institution, with The Theatre Museum Award for Excellence as an Organization for assisting seven million students to develop creatively through artist-in-residence programs with professional performers, interactive live performances and after-school intervention programs featuring art therapists.

Ben Brantley, chief theatre critic for The New York Times since 1996 and editor of "The New York Times Book of Broadway: On the Aisle for the Unforgettable Plays of the Last Century," will receive the Award for Theatre History Preservation.

Funds raised from this event will help support: the growth of The Theatre Museum organization; programs such as "Showboat 'Round the Bend!" on view at the Waterfront Museum in Red Hook, Brooklyn until May 2008; exhibitions in development including series focusing on The Ethnic Contributions to the American Theatre and exploring The Theatre History of New York's Five Boroughs ; and education outreach to public and private schools from elementary to university levels. Other programs include the Meet the Author series online and in person, theatre history walking tours, lectures and seminars. 

The Theatre Museum is New York 's first and only chartered, non-profit museum dedicated to the history of theatre.  Its primary mission is to preserve, protect and perpetuate the legacy of theatre through innovative programming including exhibitions and presentations, collaborations, theatre arts education and the annual Theatre Museum Awards for Excellence ceremony.  The vision for The Theatre Museum includes a permanent, world-class exhibition space featuring interactive exhibits, exhibitions showcasing the past, present and future of theatre here and abroad, and seminars and workshops.