New School for Drama playwriting faculty member, Michael Weller, received the Helen Merrill Award for Distinguished Playwrights. The honor recognizes Weller’s contributions to playwriting, as well as provides a financial award for continued work and projects.

“I don't know who specifically chose me, or why exactly,” Weller says, “but, I’m extremely honored to be recognized.” The award is managed by the New York Community Trust, and award director Gay Young said that often this award comes as a surprise to its recipients and is meant as a gesture of appreciation and encouragement.
 
The award was established in honor of the late Helen Merrill, an influential theatrical agent who advanced the careers of many playwrights, directors, and designers in the American theater, including playwrights Christopher Durang, Albert Innaurato, Richard Greenberg, Paul Rudnick and David Henry Hwang, among others. The designers she represented included Ming Cho Lee, George Tsypin, Tony Straiges, Paul Gallo, and William Ivey Long, and among her directors were Anne Bogart, Jerry Zaks, Christopher Ashley, Michael Greif and Lisa Peterson.

Weller’s plays have been performed at major theatres in America and around the world. Best known are Moonchildren, Fishing, Loose Ends, Spoils of War, and What the Night is For, which had a production in the West End starring Gillian Anderson and Roger Allam. His films include Hair and Ragtime (for Milos Forman) and Lost Angels (for Hugh Hudson), and a television film based on his play Spoils of War. His play Beast premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop last season, directed by Jo Bonney, and a second new play of his, 50 Words, also premiered at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, starring Elizabeth Marvel, directed by Austin Pendleton. A musical based on the Boris Pasternak novel Dr Zhivago, for which he wrote the book (Des McAnuff to direct, Lucy Simon music, Amy Powers and Michael Korie lyrics), is scheduled to open in 2010, and he is currently working with Taylor Hackford on a musical (Rumors) about the making of Fleetwood Mac’s two legendary breakthrough albums.
 
His work has won an Academy Award nomination, an N.A.A.C.P. Outstanding Contribution Award, Critics Outer Circle Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, and a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, and he has been honored by the Broken Watch Theatre Company, which names their playhouse in his honor. He is on the counsel of the Writer’s Guild of America Foundation, East, Inc, and serves as a mentor for their Iraqi War Veterans Writing Project. He is also on the board of the Dramatists Guild of America.