This year’s Claiborne Pell Award for Lifetime Achievements in the Arts were presented to Trinity Rep’s former artistic director Oskar Eustis and his wife Laurie at Salve Regina University in Newport Monday.
The two are receiving an award that in the past has gone to the likes of Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller, and Stephen Sondheim.
Oskar Eustis is now the leader of the Public Theatre in New York, which produced the Tony Award-winning shows “Fun Home” a revival of “Hair.” The theater was also the original home of the mega-hit musical “Hamilton.” Laurie Eustis has produced theater in Los Angeles and has since worked in the literary world for the Paris Review in New York and Lapham’s Quarterly.
The couple stopped by RIPR’s studios to chat with Rhode Island Public Radio’s theatre critic Bill Gale about their time in the Ocean State, and current work in New York.