2027 "MR. ABBOTT" AWARD HONORING MICHAEL MAYER
March 22, 2027 Gotham Hall
Photo by: Brigitte Lacombe
ABOUT MICHAEL MAYER
Michael Mayer has worked in a broad spectrum of media from theatre and opera to television and film. His credits include the Broadway revivals of Chess and Funny Girl, the hit Off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors, Swept Away, A Beautiful Noise, Burn This, Head Over Heels, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Tony Award – Best Musical), Spring Awakening (Tony Award – Best Musical; Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award – Best Director), American Idiot (Bookwriter; Drama Desk Award – Best Director), Thoroughly Modern Millie (Tony Award – Best Musical), Side Man (Tony Award – Best Play), A View from the Bridge (Tony Award – Best Revival), The Terms of My Surrender, Everyday Rapture, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Triumph of Love. Off-Broadway credits: We Chose to Go to the Moon at Carnegie Hall, 21 Chump Street, Chess, Love, Love, Love, Brooklynite, 10 Million Miles, and Stupid Kids. National tour of Angels in America. His opera credits include Rigoletto, La Traviata, Aida, and world premieres of Nico Muhly’s Marnie, and Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded at the Met. Producing credits include, Liberation, (Tony Award), Chess, Swept Away, and Galileo. Film credits: A Home at the End of the World (Excellence in Filmmaking – National Board of Review, GLAAD Nomination), FLICKA, The Seagull, Single All the Way, Wig. Television credits: Smash (Pilot and Season One) and Alpha House. Awards and fellowships include the inaugural Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, Drama League, Jefferson, Ovation, Alan Schneider, and Carbonell awards; Fox Foundation Fellowship, Two Drama League Fellowships, TCG/NEA Directing Fellowship. He serves on the Board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers union and Berkely Repertory Theatre.
TICKETS ON SALE SOON!
For sponsorship of Host Committee interest, email Foundation Director, Laura Peete at lpeete@sdcfoundation.org.
ABOUT THE AWARD
The “Mr. Abbott” Award, bestowed through SDCF by a committee of Directors and Choreographers to one of their peers, is named in honor of renowned director George Abbott and is presented to a director or choreographer in recognition of lifetime achievement.
To learn more about Mr. Abbott, please check out this video.
ELIGIBILITY
Directors and choreographers who have had impact over the course of career will be considered for this award for a body of work that has had influence on the field artistically. It is unlikely but not impossible for a non-SDC member to be selected.
ABOUT GEORGE ABBOTT
George Abbott, 1953
One of the most important and admired men in the entire history of Broadway – indeed, some have said that he WAS the history of Broadway –, George Abbott (b. Forestville, NY, 25 June 1887; d. Miami Beach, FL, 31 January 1995) was a theater director and producer, playwright, screenwriter, and film director and producer whose career spanned more than nine decades. He had a hand, one way or another, in the most historically and artistically significant New York productions of the twentieth century: Broadway (1926), Three Men on a Horse (1935), Brother Rat (1936), On Your Toes (1936), Room Service (1937), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), Too Many Girls (1939), Pal Joey (1940), On the Town (1944), High Button Shoes (1947), Where’s Charley? (1948), Call Me Madam (1950), Wonderful Town (1953), The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), Once Upon a Mattress (1959), Fiorello! (1959), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1961), Flora the Red Menace (1965), and 103 other shows, giving a boost to the early careers of (among others) Sylvia Field, Helen Hayes, Shirley Booth, Garson Kanin, Rodgers and Hart, Ray Bolger, Eddie Albert, Jose Ferrer, Eddie Bracken, Gene Kelly, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Nancy Walker, Jerome Robbins, Allyn Ann McLerie, Harold Prince, Carol Haney, Bob Fosse, Carol Burnett, Jack Gilford, and Liza Minnelli. Abbott had 40 films to his credit as screenwriter, director, or producer, among them All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), The Fall Guy (1930), and the film adaptations of his Broadway hits; his featured screen actors included Jean Arthur, Lew Ayres, and Gene Tierney.
PAST RECIPIENTS
| 2026 | Bartlett Sher |
| 2025 | Christopher Ashley |
| 2020 | Joe Mantello |
| 2019 | The 60th Anniversary of SDC, Agnes de Mille and Victoria Traube |
| 2018 | Julie Taymor |
| 2017 | Kenny Leon |
| 2015 | James Lapine |
| 2013 | Jerry Mitchell |
| 2011 | George C. Wolfe |
| 2009 | Donald Saddler |
| 2007 | Daniel Sullivan |
| 2005 | Kathleen & Rob Marshall |
| 2003 | Lynne Meadow |
| 2002 | Jack O’Brien |
| 2001 | Susan Stroman |
| 2000 | Celebrate Cy! (Cy Feuer’s 90th Birthday) |
| 1999 | Twenty-One for the 21st: Vinnette Carroll, Zelda Fichandler, Peter Gennaro, Gillian Lynne, Marshall W. Mason, Andrei Serban |
| 1998 | Graciela Daniele |
| 1997 | Garson Kanin |
| 1996 | Lloyd Richards |
| 1995 | Gordon Davidson |
| 1994 | Jerry Zaks |
| 1993 | Trevor Nunn |
| 1992 | Arvin Brown |
| 1991 | Tommy Tune |
| 1990 | Gene Saks |
| 1989 | Michael Bennet |
| 1988 | Agnes de Mille |
| 1987 | Mike Nichols |
| 1986 | Bob Fosse |
| 1985 | Harold Prince |