Obie Awards

Overview

When The Village Voice Obie Awards were instituted during the 1955–56 theatrical season, they recognized for the first time the important and significant dramatic activities that flourished Off-Broadway in the dozens of small theaters, church auditoriums, and public meeting halls that were used to present plays that could not, for various reasons, be performed on Broadway.

The venues in which these plays were presented were smaller than Broadway theaters, limiting the size of audiences and the revenues of such productions. Likewise, the tickets were not expensive, further limiting the profitability of such presentations. No one associated with Off-Broadway theater was in it for profit. Indeed, it was a rare Off-Broadway production that did not lose money. The salaries of those associated with such plays were considerably lower than those of their counterparts on Broadway.

Jerry Tallmer, drama critic for The Village Voice, an avant-garde newspaper that appeared weekly in New York City’s Greenwich Village starting in 1955 and soon attracted a national audience, established The Village Voice Obie Awards in 1956. He and his colleagues at The Village Voice realized that Off-Broadway theater served two fundamental purposes. For one thing, it made possible the production of significant older plays that were not being brought to Broadway. While this conservation function of Off-Broadway theater was of the utmost importance, more important still was the opportunity that Off-Broadway theater provided for the promotion of innovative theater. Off-Broadway theater produced plays that were too far outside the mainstream to be considered suitable for production by the profit-driven Broadway theaters because of their high overhead and complex financial structure.

Over and above these functions, Off-Broadway theater served as a proving ground for young talent, not only for young actors but also for fledgling playwrights, directors, set designers, and all manner of people involved in the production of plays. Tallmer envisioned an awards program that would honor people in every aspect of play production and encourage small acting companies. As a result, the Obies recognize a much broader field of play production than many comparable awards.

The Early Obies

The Obie Awards are the highest honor paid to Off-Broadway productions. They have been compared to the Tony Awards given by the American Theatre Wing in recognition of their significant contributions to theater. However, their scope is narrower, and they are limited to productions on Off-Broadway stages in New York City.

From the outset, the Obie Awards were not tightly bound by structured and immutable categories. They were designed to celebrate every aspect of dramatic production. The first Obie Awards in 1956 recognized achievement in the following categories: Best New Play, Best Production, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Musical, Distinguished Performances by Actresses, Distinguished Performances by Actors, Sets (including lighting and costumes), and special citations given to theaters or acting companies.

From year to year, some categories were added while others were dropped, although what was included varied with every new group of awards the judges bestowed. In 1958, when there was no prize for Best Director, four new categories appeared: Best Adaptation, Best Revival, Best Comedy, and Best One-act Play. These categories did not appear the following year, but a new category, Best Revue, was added.

In 1969, all the categories in place since 1956 were dropped. In that year, individuals were simply recognized with a play title following their name: No accolade such as “Distinguished Play” or “Best Actress” was provided. These awards were all grouped under the heading “General Citations for Outstanding Achievement.” In that year, several theater companies, notably Theatre Genesis, the Open Theater, OM Theater, and the Performance Group, were recognized, Theatre Genesis for “sustained excellence” and the others for specific productions.

In 1971, the former categories were resurrected and included “Best Foreign Play” and “Distinguished Plays.” Both categories had occurred occasionally in previous years, along with the more typical plays honoring specific performers, directors, and designers.

The Obies are unique in that they do not limit the number of honorees in any category so that true excellence can be recognized in a particularly good year. This is quite unlike the problem posed in the annual awarding of Pulitzer Prizes, in which there is one prize in each category. In a particularly fruitful year, three or four plays may very well be deserving of Pulitzer Prizes. Still, according to the rules governing the Pulitzer Prizes, only one award can be given. Of course, it must be remembered that individuals receiving Obies are given only a small grant between $1,000 and $5,000 in recognition of their achievement rather than a large monetary award. In 2024, it was announced that these monetary grants would replace an awards ceremony completely and be announced solely via the press.

Off-Off-Broadway Productions

In 1964, the Obie Awards were expanded to include a recent phenomenon that impacted theater, Off-Off-Broadway. Whereas Off-Broadway theater preserved traditional theater and encouraged innovation among new playwrights, Off-Off-Broadway was what Ross Wetzsteon called a “third stage . . .[a] revolution against the revolutionaries.”

By the mid-1960s, Off-Broadway was becoming somewhat mainstream. Compared with Off-Off-Broadway, a revolutionary type of theater, Off-Broadway seemed almost conventional. Off-Off-Broadway plays dealt directly and often harshly with the social problems of the 1960s: racial tensions, the Vietnam War, and social and political conditions that resulted in the string of high-profile assassinations before the decade was over. The sheer energy and sincerity of such productions made them worthy of a recognition that they could not gain from conventional sources. It was at this point that the Obies could serve to encourage a wholly new approach, albeit a quite disturbing one, to American theater. The output of those writing for Off-Off-Broadway was astounding.

Some companies staged as many as fifty new plays a year, working with minimal props and performing in whatever space they could find, either free of charge or for small sums of money. They priced tickets so that most theatergoers could easily afford them. Perhaps the most influential of these Off-Off-Broadway venues was Ellen Stewart’s Café La Mama, a few blocks south of St. Mark’s Place, where at any given time between Thursday and Sunday, two plays might be going on simultaneously, one upstairs and another in one of the “piggyback theaters” in the basement.

Selecting the Winners

Choosing Obie recipients is as informal as the kinds of theater the awards honor. The judges, members of The Village Voice drama staff, and two guest critics whom The Village Voice selects—usually critics from New York City daily newspapers or national weekly news magazines—meet once a month throughout the year. They discuss Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway productions and, over time, produce a master list of possible honorees. In the early days, this list consisted of seventy to one hundred entries, of which some twenty winners would finally be selected at the last meeting of the judges in May.

As time went on, however, the lists grew in size. By 1993, more than thirty Obies were awarded. This number grew to nearly forty in 1999 and was back at thirty-four the following year. In the first decade and a half of the Obie Awards, the typical number of prizes given was about twenty, considering that the awards for distinguished performances and distinguished direction typically had more than one recipient—often as many as nine or ten collectively. In 2023, thirty-seven Obies were awarded. 

Perhaps the strongest factor in ensuring the breadth and value of the Obies is that there are no formal nominations for them. The judges consider the entire field for the season in question, including plays that may have run for only two or three weekends in a church basement, the back room of a bar, or n isolated loft somewhere in lower Manhattan.

When he accepted an Obie Award for his 1975-1976 performance in David Mamet’s American Buffalo (pr. 1975), Mike Kellin remarked, surely hyperbolically, that only ten people saw the show, but fortunately, seven of them were Obie judges. Edward Albee revealed his respect for the Obie Awards in his statement that seven out of ten times, the award for the best play goes to what turns out to be the best play. The Obie Awards have kept this loose format into the twenty-first century. There are no formal nominations, the categories remain flexible, and several winners can be in one category.

The Obie as a First Award

Many—indeed, probably most—of the recipients of Obie Awards receive their first national recognition as actors, playwrights, or directors when they receive this award. Edward Albee, for example, was virtually unknown when The Zoo Story (pr. 1959) brought him an Obie as one of three distinguished plays receiving the 1960 award. In this year, also, , whose name was unfamiliar to most playgoers, received an Obie for Krapp’s Last Tape (pr. 1958).

Beckett, the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient, received a second Obie for Happy Days (pr. 1961) in 1962 and a third for Play (pr. 1963; English translation, 1964) in 1964. Whereas Albee’s recognition for winning the Obie paved the way for him to stage his subsequent productions on Broadway (later in his career, he returned to Off-Broadway with Three Tall Women, pr. 1991), Beckett continued to write Off-Broadway productions long after his first award. LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) was little known in 1964 when he received an Obie for Dutchman (pr. 1964). In the same year, three more of his plays were produced Off-Broadway, The Baptism, The Slave, and The Toilet, perhaps spurred on by the recognition Dutchman had received.

and Mamet both won their first major dramatic awards when they were given Obies, Wilson for The Hot l Baltimore (pr. 1973) in 1973, and Mamet for American Buffalo in 1975. American Buffalo went on to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Wilson and Mamet have since been acknowledged as being among the United States’ leading playwrights.

Among actors who received Obies when they were still largely unknown to theater audiences were such luminaries as Dustin Hoffman, George C. Scott, Jason Robards Jr., Colleen Dewhurst, Zero Mostel, Eileen Brennan, Nancy Marchand, Anne Meacham, Barbara Harris, Olympia Dukakis, James Earl Jones, Al Pacino, Rue McClanahan, Hector Elizondo, and Stacy Keach. Although most of these performers went on to make names for themselves in Hollywood or on Broadway, many relished opportunities to return to Lower Manhattan to perform Off-Broadway for a fraction of what they were paid elsewhere. Dewhurst once said that returning to Off-Broadway was like returning home, echoing the sentiments of many Obie winners who had graduated to distinguished careers in acting.

The Ross Wetzsteon Grant

When the Obie Awards chairperson, Ross Wetzsteon, died in 1998, The Village Voice established special annual awards of two thousand dollars in his memory. These awards are designed to help struggling Off-Broadway or Off-Off-Broadway theatrical companies meet their expenses. The grant recognizes that in some cases, such companies, accustomed to economizing in every possible way, can be kept afloat simply by receiving relatively small sums to help them meet their expenses.

The Ross Wetzsteon Grant for the 1999-2000 season went to The Foundry, with three other Obie Grants going to the Big Dance Theater, Circus Amok, and Five Myles. In 2023, Mark Russel and his Under the Radar Festival received the grant. These grants have become a significant factor in helping to sustain companies that stage innovative dramas but that struggle from year to year on stringent budgets.

Bibliography

Berkowitz, Gerald M. New Broadways: Theatre Across America, Approaching a New Millennium. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 1996.

Brantley, Ben. The New York Times Book of Broadway: On the Aisle for the Best Plays of the Last Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.

Culwell, Logan. “Reimagined Obie Awards Will Give Winners Cash Grants in Lieu of Awards Ceremony.” Playbill, 25 Jan. 2024, playbill.com/article/reimagined-obie-awards-will-give-winners-cash-grants-in-lieu-of-awards-ceremony. Accessed 25 July 2024.

Horn, Barbara Lee. Ellen Stewart and La Mama: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.

Lang, Brent. “67th Obie Awards Announce 2023 Judges, Eligibility Details.” Variety, 12 July 2023, variety.com/2023/legit/news/obie-awards-2023-judges-eligibility-details-1235668551. Accessed 25 July 2024.

Little, Stuart W. Off-Broadway: The Prophetic Theater. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1972.

“66th Obies Winners Announced.” Obie Awards, 23 Feb. 2023, www.obieawards.com/2023/02/66th-obies-winners-announced. Accessed 25 July 2024.

Wetzsteon, Ross, editor. The Obie Winners: The Best of Off-Broadway. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1980.