Elizabeth LeCompte, the director of the experimental theater company theWooster Group, has been awarded the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, which is given annually to an artist who pushes the boundaries of an art form and contributes to social change.
The prize, established in 1994 through the will of the actress Lillian Gish, carries a cash award of about $300,000, making it one of the richest arts prizes in the United States. Previous winners include Suzan-Lori Parks, Anna Deavere Smith, Spike Lee, Frank Gehry, Bob Dylan and the lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, a longtime Wooster Group associate.
Ms. LeCompte, who trained as a visual artist, formed the Wooster Group in SoHo in 1975 with Spalding Gray. Since then it has created more than 30 pieces under her direction, many of which incorporate film, video and recorded sound in performances of classic texts by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Eugene O’Neill and others, creating what the prize announcement called “startlingly innovative, collagelike works.”
The group’s recent productions include “The Town Hall Affair,” based on Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary about the famous 1971 public debate about feminism between Norman Mailer and four female writers, and “Early Shaker Spirituals,” about a 1976 record by Sisters of the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community.
The prize will be awarded in November in a private ceremony at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ms. LeCompte, whose previous honors include MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, said in a statement that the prize was an affirmation of the work of the entire company.
“There’s a tendency with theater to think of each show as its own beginning and end, but what’s important to me is the whole thread of the work,” Ms. LeCompte said, adding, “I’m deeply grateful to the Gish Prize for recognizing that our company is still in it for the long haul.”
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