Inside the 2026 Dramatists Guild of America Awards

The Dramatists Guild of America celebrated its 2026 Awards on Monday, April 27, 2026, in New York City, honoring a remarkable group of playwrights, composers, lyricists, librettists, theater artists, and advocates whose work continues to shape the American theatre.

The evening also marked a historic milestone for the Guild, as the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York issued an official proclamation recognizing April 27, 2026 as “Dramatists Guild of America’s Minimum Basic Agreement Day” in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Guild’s first enforceable contract.

The proclamation celebrated the Dramatists Guild as one of New York’s essential cultural institutions, noting that “you cannot tell the story of New York without acknowledging the cultural institutions that have shaped it.” It also recognized the landmark 1926 Minimum Basic Agreement, which secured essential protections for dramatists, including authorial ownership of , no changes in text without permission, approvals over artistic collaborators, the right to be present at casting, rehearsals, previews, and performances, and control over subsidiary rights, including film rights.

At the ceremony, Bess Wohl received the Hull-Warriner Award for Liberation; Kimber Lee received the Horton Foote Playwriting Award; Lisa Kron received the Flora Roberts Award; Victor I. Cazares received the Lanford Wilson Award; and Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez received the Frederick Loewe Award for their score for Real Women Have Curves. Migdalia Cruz received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund Defender Award was presented to Maggie Marie Lawson and Liberty Welch for their advocacy on behalf of artistic freedom after their university canceled Boy My Greatness by Zoe Senese-Grossberg.

Throughout the evening, honorees reflected on the perseverance, community, and courage required to build a life in the theatre. Accepting the Flora Roberts Award, Lisa Kron said, “To outside eyes, long careers seem to be made of success. But the truth is, they’re built on a tolerance for failure,” adding that “all new work starts at the bottom.”

Accepting the Frederick Loewe Award on behalf of himself and Joy Huerta, Benjamin Velez called the score for Real Women Have Curves “a labor of love,” and spoke about the importance of giving voice to characters “who don’t often get to be heard.”

Bess Wohl, whose Liberation received the Hull-Warriner Award, reflected on the Guild community and the importance of continuing to create, saying, “With everything going on in the world, obviously, everyone’s said it — so much horror and noise and distraction — the most obvious response is not always to wake up and write a play, or compose a song. But all of you do, and keep doing it, and that inspires me to keep doing it.”

In one of the evening’s most moving moments, Maggie Marie Lawson and Liberty Welch accepted the DLDF Defender Award for independently producing Boy My Greatness after the University of Central Oklahoma canceled the production. “This play means so much to us because as queer students in theater, we saw ourselves and our friends in this play,” Lawson said. “Please keep listening to queer and trans students from the middle of nowhere. They need you.”

Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Migdalia Cruz reflected on a career of more than 60 plays, saying, “You have given me the greatest gift, dear colleagues: the proof of life, in perpetuity,” before declaring, “I will never stop remembering where I come from and writing from my viscera.”

The program also included performances from Real Women Have Curves and Ragtime. Elisa Galindez, accompanied by Nadia DiGiallonardo, performed “Flying Away” from Real Women Have Curves, and the evening closed with Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty performing “Our Children” from Ragtime.

The 2026 Dramatists Guild Awards brought together writers, artists, advocates, and members of the theatre community for an evening centered on the Guild’s ongoing mission to protect and empower dramatists and to celebrate the writers whose words continue to move American theatre forward.