59th Obie Awards will take place on 19 May 2014

The Village Voice, the nation's largest alternative weekly newspaper, has announced the 59th Annual OBIE awards will take place on 19 May 2014 at Webster Hall in the East Village. The co-hosts for the event are still to be announced.

Michael Feingold, critic and longtime judge of the awards will once again act as chairperson for the 59th Annual Village Voice OBIE Awards.

Josh Fromson, publisher of the Village Voice said,

We are very pleased to have Michael Feingold continue his relationship with the Voice and serve as Obie Chairman for our 59th annual awards. Michael brings his elevated skill and expertise as an icon of the New York theater community with a deep history and love for the theater and the Obies.

Alexis Soloski, will once again assist the committee handling some administrative duties and serve as an advisor for the awards ceremony. Alexis is a Post-Doctoral Lecturer in Literature Humanities at Columbia and a longtime drama critic at The Village Voice.

Joining Feingold and Soloski as this years judge's are:

Kirsten Childs is a musical-theater writer whose show 'The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin' won her, in addition to the Obie, the Kleban, Larson, Richard Rodgers, Audelco, and Gilman/Gonzalez-Falla awards, as well as Lortel and Drama Desk nominations. She is currently working with Rajiv Joseph and Bill Sherman on the musical 'Fly,' with Charlayne Woodard on the musical Grace, and is developing her own show, at Playwrights Horizons, exploring the African-American experience in the Wild West. She is a professor at NYUs Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, a member of both the Dramatists Guild Council and the Dramatists Guild Fund, and a mentor in TDF's Open Doors program.

Nicky Paraiso is Director of Programming for The Club at La MaMa, and Curator for the annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. He has been an actor, musician, and solo performance artist in New York's downtown theater for over three decades, involved most notably in the work of Meredith Monk and Jeff Weiss, among others. He has served on various theater and dance panels and selection committees, currently including the New York Dance and Performance Awards, aka The Bessies.

Tonya Pinkins is a Tony and Obie Award-winning actress who has appeared in television and film, but whose first love is the theater.

Rick Sordelet is the most prolific fight director in the U.S., with 60 Broadway productions and 54 first-class productions on five continents to his credit. He has staged fights for hundreds of shows Off-Broadway and in regional theaters, as well as over twelve hundred episodes of daytime television and several first-class films. A board member for the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, he has won the Edith Oliver Award for Sustained Excellence from the Lucille Lortel Foundation, and a Jeff Award for Best Fight Direction for Romeo and Juliet at Chicago Shakespeare.

For the past half-century The Village Voice Obie Awards have honored the best of Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway. Structured with informal categories that change annually, The Village Voice Obie Awards recognize persons and productions of excellence. Unlike most theater awards, The Village Voice Obie Awards have no nominations.