Ebersole, Hibbert, Lahti, Rashad, et al. Will Be Obie Presenters

Douglas Carter Beane, Christine Ebersole, Oskar Eustis, Edward Hibbert, Christine Lahti, and Phylicia Rashad will be among the presenters at the 51st Annual Village Voice Obie Awards ceremony, to be held at 8pm on Monday, May 15 at the Skirball Center at New York University.

The Obies honor the best of Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway. No nominations are announced in advance, nor are any set number of awards presented. No host for the ceremony has yet been named, and the only entertainment announced thus far is a performance by the cast of the recent New York Theatre Workshop musical The Seven. More details are expected shortly.

This year’s Obie panel is chaired by Village Voice theater editor Jorge Morlaes. The judges are playwright Lynn Nottage, actress Dierdre O’Connell, director David Herskovits, playwright Eduardo Machado, Yale Univesity professor Marc Robinson, and Village Voice theater critics Michael Feingold and Alexis Soloski.

Beane is the author of The Little Dog Laughed, which had a successful run this season at Second Stage and will transfer to Broadway in the fall. Ebersole is currently starring in Grey Gardens, for which she has just received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination. Eustis is the artistic director of The Public Theater. Hibbert is starring on Broadway in The Drowsy Chaperone. Lahti will soon be seen at Playwrights Horizons in Keith Bunin’s The Busy World Is Hushed. Rashad recently starred Off-Broadway in Bernarda Alba.