Drama Desk Award Presented to BMI Musical Theatre Workshop

Drama Desk President William Wolf stopped by the BMI New York office to hand deliver the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop’s crystal statuette. The Workshop, honored at the 2006 ceremony held last month in New York, received the special award “for nurturing, developing and promoting new talent for the musical theater.” The annual Drama Desk Awards honor excellence in theater for Broadway, Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway during the season.

Deemed “the Harvard of musical theatre” by The New York Times, the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop was founded in 1961 by BMI and the late Lehman Engel, dean of American musical theatre, to create a setting where new writers could learn their craft. It is the birthplace of such classic musicals as A Chorus Line, Nine, Little Shop of Horrors, Beauty and the Beast, and current Broadway favorite Avenue Q. The Workshop also received the 2005 Drama League Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre.