The award consists of an original statuette created by New York City sculptor Joe Sorge, and a one-year scholarship named in honor of the award recipient given to a promising actor to the OSC school, allowing him/her at no cost to attend classes and production workshops, which culminate in a new Shakespeare production every month. The recipient of the Al Pacino Scholarship is New York actor Frank Franconeri.

Pacino will be returning to Broadway in the fall as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, reprising his critically acclaimed performance from this summer in the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park presentation of the play. He is a two-time Tony Award winner for his work in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? and The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. His other Broadway appearances include American Buffalo, Hughie, and Salome.

He is an eight-time Oscar nominee, winning for Scent of a Woman. His many films include The Godfather trilogy, Dog Day Afternoon, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Frankie and Johnny, and he won the Emmy Award for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in HBO's miniseries version of Angels in America.

The Oxford Shakespeare Company, which has plans to build a New York City Globe Theatre in Lower Manhattan, will next month present the American premiere of the newly-accepted Shakespeare play Double Falsehood.

For more information on The Merchant of Venice on Broadway, click here.

For more information on the Oxford Prize, visit OSCtheatre.org.