1965-1966 award record
- Categories
- 3
- Honoured
- 6
- Nominated
- —
- New this season
- 1
6 awards were given across 3 categories. Shortlists were not published in this period, so everyone named here was honoured — none of them is a runner-up. The entries come from the announcements issued at the time, the only public record of this season. One category appears for the first time this season: Special Award.
Three headings and six names, including one Special Award — the only such award anywhere in this batch, and a category that exists precisely because a jury wanted to honour something the standing list had no room for.
Best Playwright carried three winners in the same season, which was normal before shortlists: they are not competing with each other. This is also the last decade in which no design or craft category appears anywhere on the list.
Two of the six names here belong to work that outgrew the season. Douglas Turner Ward is credited for Day of Absence and Happy Ending, a programme of two one-act plays.
They premiered at the St. Mark's Playhouse in Manhattan on 15 November 1965 and ran for 504 performances over fifteen months. Ward went on to be one of the founders of the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967.
The Special Award went to The Living Theatre, an American theatre company founded in 1947 by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, and the oldest experimental theatre group in the United States.
The same company had produced Jack Gelber's The Connection, honoured on this record six seasons earlier. A jury honouring a company rather than a production is the clearest sign of what a Special Award heading was for.
William Alfred's Hogan's Goat, one of the three plays sharing the Best Playwright heading this season, is also remembered for an early leading performance by Faye Dunaway, staged two years before she became a film star. John Arden's Sarjeant Musgrave's Dance, the third of the three, is a work by a British playwright associated with political and historical drama.
Kevin O'Connor's honoured performance in Six from La MaMa was staged at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the off-off-Broadway institution Ellen Stewart founded in 1961. Its presence on this page, alongside The Living Theatre's Special Award the same season, places 1965-66 squarely inside the experimental-theatre scene the 1960s record keeps returning to.
Irene Dailey, honoured for Rooms, later became a familiar face on daytime television as Liz Matthews on Another World, a role she held for over a decade — a second illustration, alongside Kevin O'Connor's La MaMa credit, of how varied the careers behind this one thin season turned out to be. Neither career is visible from the six lines on this page alone.
Sources: Douglas Turner Ward, The Living Theatre, The Connection, Hogan's Goat, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Irene Dailey
Best Performances
These entries did not carry a heading of their own in the surviving announcement. They are placed here from their position in the original, so the heading above is the most likely one rather than a recorded one.
Honoured
- Irene Dailey Rooms
- Kevin O'Connor Six from La MaMa
Best Playwright
These entries did not carry a heading of their own in the surviving announcement. They are placed here from their position in the original, so the heading above is the most likely one rather than a recorded one.
Honoured
- Douglas Turner Ward Day of Absence / Happy Ending
- John Arden Sargeant Musgrave's Dance
- William Alfred Hogan's Goat
Special Award
Winner
- The Living Theatre The Living Theatre
Questions about this season's record
What is a Special Award?
A heading used when a jury wants to honour something the standing category list has no room for. It is the only such award anywhere in the earliest decades of this record, and here it went to a company rather than to a production.
Who were The Living Theatre?
An American theatre company founded in 1947 by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, and the oldest experimental theatre group in the United States. It had already produced Jack Gelber's The Connection, honoured on this record six seasons earlier. Honouring a company rather than a production is the clearest illustration of what the heading was for.
Why do three playwrights share one heading?
Best Playwright honoured three writers together that season. Shortlists were not published in this period, so they are not competing with each other and none of the three lost to the other two. Their three plays were Hogan's Goat, Sargeant Musgrave's Dance, and Day of Absence with Happy Ending.
What were Day of Absence and Happy Ending?
A programme of two one-act plays, premiered at the St. Mark's Playhouse in Manhattan on 15 November 1965, which ran for 504 performances over fifteen months. Douglas Turner Ward went on to co-found the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967. That run is long for two one-acts, and it is what the award here is recognising.
Is any design category awarded this season?
No. No craft or design heading appears anywhere on this record during the 1960s until the 1968-69 season. The people who built, dressed and lit these productions are simply absent from the paperwork for this whole decade. Set design arrives in 1968-69, two seasons after this page, and it arrives alone.
Who else on this page appears elsewhere in the record
1 of the 6 names on this page appear in at least one other season held here. Reading a person as a run rather than a single entry is the point of an index like this one. A designer's work shows up under two or three different category names as the headings were renamed.
- Kevin O'Connor 2 seasons 1973-1974