COLUMBUS, OHIO: The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute at the Ohio State University has named Oskar Eustis the 2019 recipient of the Margo Jones Award. Eustis will be presented with a medal on March 30 at the Public Theater in New York City.
Established in 1961, the annual award commemorates Jones, a pioneer in the field often recognized as the founder of the American regional theatre movement. The award honors a citizen of the theatre who has demonstrated a commitment to the living theatre and champions the craft of playwriting.
Eustis has served as the artistic director of the Public since 2005. Under his leadership, the Public has produced two Tony-winning best musicals and back-to-back winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His directing credits at the Public include the New York premieres of Rinne Groff’s Compulsion and The Ruby Sunrise; Larry Wright’s The Human Scale; and most recently Julius Caesar and Public Works’ Twelfth Night at Shakespeare in the Park. Eustis serves as a professor of dramatic writing and arts and public policy at New York University, and has held professorships at UCLA, Middlebury College, and Brown University, where he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for professional theatre training. Before the Public, Eustis served as the artistic director of Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, R.I. He also served as associate artistic director at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum, and in multiple positions at the the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco.
