Come See Some of Broadway's Best & Brightest Stars!
The following performers are scheduled to appear
And more to be announced!
Meet Our Honorees
2025 Lifetime Achievement Award in Musical Theatre - Jerry Zaks
Jerry Zaks is a four-time Tony Award-winning director of 26 Broadway shows, including such recent productions as Hello, Dolly!, Mrs. Doubtfire, and The Music Man. Born in Germany to Holocaust survivors, he changed his plan to pursue a medical degree after seeing Wonderful Town on a blind date while in college at Dartmouth. He began his career as an actor; one of his early roles was Motel in a summer production of Fiddler on the Roof with Zero Mostel, who told Zaks's parents that their son would be "more than all right" in the theatre business.
When Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote about Jerry Zaks's flair for directing comedy in 1988, he noted that "with Mr. Zaks one can use the word 'comedy' in the broadest sense." That statement is indicative of the wide range of his work.
A founding member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, Zaks began his career as a director with Christopher Durang's plays, including EST's production of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All to You and Beyond Therapy. He went on to win Tony Awards for directing John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor, and the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls.
Zaks has received Obie, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, the SDCF "Mr. Abbott" Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre, an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2023.
2025 York Theatre Founder's Award - Joan Ross Sorkin
Joan Ross Sorkin is proud member of the Board of Directors of The York Theatre Company and served as President of the York Board for nine years from 2015-2024. She was the first musical theatre writer to serve on the Board. In addition to being a musical bookwriter and lyricist, she is an opera librettist and playwright. Her musicals include Black Swan Blues, Bordello, Monet, In The Theatre, The Real McCoy, Dandelion (published by Dramatic Publishing) and award-winning family musicals Isabelle and The Pretty-Ugly Spell and Go Green!, many of which were developed at The York. She was also a York Theatre NEO lyricist in 2009. Her operas include Strange Fruit, White Witch, Jubilee, Roman Fever, Paradise Bound and The Reef, one of four finalists for the Pellicciotti Opera Prize with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. Her favorite play is (mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story, which garnered a Drama Desk nomination for Capathia Jenkins as Hattie. Other plays have been produced in New York City and regionally. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild, BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, ASCAP, and Opera America. www.joanrosssorkin.com
**If you would like to purchase tickets or make a donation by check, please send it to: 630 Ninth Ave, Ste. 1400, New York, NY 10036**
