2020 Gala

Announcing the Roth-Vogel New Play Commission

For questions about making a donation in honor of Daryl Roth and Paula Vogel, please contact Director of Development Trent Anderson at tanderson@vineyardtheatre.org or at (646) 931-4727.


Dear Friends,

In the light of our current circumstances, we will be cancelling Vineyard Theatre’s 2020 Gala, originally scheduled to take place on April 20 at 583 Park Avenue.

In arriving at this inevitable conclusion, we have been deeply grateful for the wise counsel of our honorees Daryl Roth and Paula Vogel, who have asked us to share a special announcement on their behalf:

“We both have a deep loving relationship with The Vineyard that began with HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE and was bookended twenty years later with INDECENT, and continues to this day.

We are grateful that our friends at The Vineyard chose to honor us at the 2020 Gala, and for the generous contributions made thus far to the event. Since the Gala is unable to happen, in its place we wanted to create something lasting and meaningful in appreciation of that recognition. We are proud to initiate the Roth-Vogel New Play Commission, to be given annually through Vineyard Theatre.

We hope this will encourage and inspire work to emerge from these difficult times…. Art matters.”

We are grateful to Daryl and Paula and honored to partner with them to make this investment in artists, The Vineyard, and the field. The Vineyard’s Gala is our most important fundraiser of the season, with an objective of raising $400,000 in direct support of our mainstage, artistic development, and education programming.

In the face of the unprecedented challenges of this time, these funds are more crucial than ever for the theatre’s continued operation and to uphold our commitment to paying artists and staff. We hope you will consider making a fully tax-deductible gift to Vineyard Theatre today to help us achieve this important goal.


To make a DONATION, click here.


Looking forward, we hope to host a less formal gathering in the fall for all Gala donors at the $1,000+ level to have the long-awaited chance to toast our honorees in person, and hope you will be able to join us.

Thank you in advance for your generosity and for your support of The Vineyard. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Douglas Aibel
Artistic Director

Sarah Stern
Artistic Director

Suzanne Appel
Managing Director


Daryl Roth is an award-winning producer whose mission is to champion thought-provoking, inspiring work onstage. She is honored to hold the singular distinction of producing 7 Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Anna in the Tropics; August: Osage County (2008 Tony Award); Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award); How I Learned to Drive; Proof (2001 Tony Award); Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women; and Wit.  

The proud recipient of 12 Tony Awards and London’s Olivier Award, her over 120 productions both on and off Broadway include Kinky Boots, the 2013 Tony Award winning Best Musical, which ran for 6 years on Broadway and is now represented on tour in the US and around the world (London, Toronto, Australia, Korea, Japan, Germany); Larry Kramer’s seminal play about the AIDS crisis, The Normal Heart (2011 Tony Award); Paula Vogel’s award-winning play Indecent; Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron’s international hit play Love, Loss, and What I Wore; and Gloria: A Life, a play about the iconic Gloria Steinem. Upcoming Spring 2020: The new musical Between the Lines; the Broadway premiere of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive.   

Daryl is a Trustee of the Kennedy Center and the New York City Police Foundation, and served on the Board of Lincoln Center Theatre for twenty years, and remains the Co-Chair of the Patron Committee and an Honorary Trustee. Previously, she served on the Boards of the New York State Council on the Arts, the Sundance Institute, the Vineyard Theatre, and LAByrinth Theater Company.  She actively supports a diverse group of charitable and cultural institutions, and is involved in LGBTQ rights causes, animal rights organizations, and numerous theatre, dance, public television, and cultural arts organizations.

The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award annually honors a gifted theatre artist or organization, providing them with financial support as they develop new works in an artistic residency. The Daryl Roth Theatre, a landmark building on Manhattan’s Union Square, is home to three distinct performance spaces.

Honors include The New Dramatists Outstanding Career Achievement Award; New York Living Landmarks Award; and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. She is proud to have been inducted into the 2017 Theatre Hall of Fame and be named to Crain’s 2019 “50 Most Powerful Women in New York.”


Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Broadway production set for spring 2020, Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas. She is currently working on three new projects, including a new play commissioned by CTG and Second Stage. Honors include induction in the American Theatre Hall of Fame, the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lily Award, the Thornton Wilder Prize, the Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the William Inge Award, the Elliott Norton Award, a Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the PEN/Laura Pels Award, a TCG Residency Award, a Guggenheim, a Pew Charitable Trust Award, and fellowships and residencies at Sundance Theatre Lab, Hedgebrook, The Rockefeller Center’s Bellagio Center, Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, and the Bunting. She is particularly proud of her Thirtini Award from 13P, and honored by three Awards in her name:  the Paula Vogel Award for Playwrights given by the Vineyard Theatre, the Paula Vogel Award from the American College Theatre Festival, and the Paula Vogel mentorship program, curated by Quiara Hudes and Young Playwrights of Philadelphia. Paula was playwright in residence at The Signature Theatre (2004-05 season), and Theatre Communications Group publishes six volumes of her work. Paula continues her playwriting intensives with community organizations, students, theater companies, subscribers and writers across the globe. She was the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence and has recently taught at Sewanee, Shanghai Theatre Academy and Nanjing University, the Universities of Texas at El Paso and Austin, and the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis.  From 1984 to 2008, Paula Vogel founded and ran the MFA playwriting program at Brown University; during that time she started a theatre workshop for women in Maximum Security at the Adults Correction Institute in Cranston, Rhode Island. From 2008-2012, she was the O’Neill Chair at Yale School of Drama. She will serve as judge for the Yale Drama Series 2021 and 2022 competitions. PaulaVogelPlaywright.com