Metropolitan Playhouse Receives Victorian Society Award

Metropolitan Playhouse was honored Wednesday night, June 11th, by the Victorian Society New York with an Award for Outstanding Performance Arts Group, in recognition of the company's work "contributing to the understanding, appreciation and preservation of nineteenth-century heritage in the New York City area."

The Playhouse is the one of few performing arts groups to receive an award from the Victorian Society, and the first since The Mint Theater in 2004. Award recipients are selected by the Victorian Society through recommendations of members, and include institutions devoted to preservation, conservation, and history. In accepting this honor, Artistic Director Alex Roe observed that "Love sought is good, but given unsought better," and thanked the Society for recognizing the consonance in the Society's mission and Metropolitan's: to better understand contemporary American culture by investigating its past.

Fellow recipients of awards this year include the New York Historical Society; The Skyscraper Museum; the publishers of Great Houses of New York, 1880-1940, Vol 2; The Bowery Boys (podcast); The Cherokee Apartments and St Peter's Episcopal Church for their work preserving their respective buildings; and conservation activist, Jack Taylor.

Founded in New York City in 1966, the Victorian Society in America is dedicated to fostering the appreciation and preservation of American nineteenth-century heritage as well as that of the early twentieth century (1837-1917). The Metropolitan Chapter is an independent organization affiliated with the national society, whose activities include free lectures by experts in architecture, decorative arts, fine arts, landscape, literature, and cultural history; tours of special exhibitions, neighborhood walks, and visits to historical sites.

Metropolitan Playhouse, now its 22nd season, explores America's theatrical heritage through forgotten plays of the past and new plays of American historical and cultural moment. Metropolitan is currently staging Bayard Veiller's 1912 melodrama, Within the Law, hailed as "spectacularly good" by Martin Denton at nytheaternow.com. Called an "indispensable East Village institution" by nytheatre.com and "invaluable" by Back Stage, Metropolitan has earned accolades from The New York Times, and received a 2011 OBIE Grant from The Village Voice for its ongoing productions that illuminate who we are by revealing where we have come from. Other awards include nominations for 2 NYIT awards in 2013 (for The Detour), 5 nominations in 2012 (The House of Mirth; Sidney Fortner winner for costumes), and 5 more in 2010 (The Return of Peter Grimm; Frank Anderson winner for lead actor). Recent productions include The Hero, Self, A Man's World, The Henrietta, The Detour, The Boss, Both Your Houses, The House of Mirth, Deep Are the Roots, The Jazz Singer, From Rags to Riches, One-Third of a Nation, The Great Divide, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Drunkard, Dodsworth, as well as the Alphabet City and East Village Chronicles series.