The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center presented its 2026 Monte Cristo Award to Tony, Pulitzer Prize, and Academy Award winner John Patrick Shanley on Monday, November 9, at Capitale in New York City. The O’Neill’s 24th annual gala celebrated the playwright and screenwriter whose relationship with the Center began in 1982, when he developed Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at the National Playwrights Conference.

In accepting the award, Shanley recalled the first time the conference asked him to read his own work aloud. “I was suddenly seized, catapulted into the kingdom of my dreams,” he said. He thanked the actors, producers, and colleagues who kept his plays going, recalling how often a single yes made the difference. “It takes so many talented, committed people to keep one playwright going, to keep any artist going.

”Stephen Adly Guirgis, who presented the award, recalled inviting Shanley to a production of Italian American Reconciliation he directed in the Bronx. Shanley came and went backstage to meet the cast. Guirgis spoke about how reading Shanley had widened his sense of what he could write and praised his continued devotion to the work. “You are a kind of north star of how to do it and what to do,” Guirgis said.

John Turturro traced his friendship with Shanley to Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, recalling how the play went from early work with Mary McDonnell to Louisville and then to New York. He also remembered Shanley championing him for a role in Five Corners. “John has affected my whole life,” Turturro said.

Directed by Patrick Vassel, the program brought together Damon Daunno, Florencia Lozano, Pete McElligott, Katherine Romans, and Jake Silbermann for scenes from Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, and Italian American Reconciliation, which were all developed at The O’Neill. The evening also featured clips from Joe Versus the Volcano, Moonstruck, Doubt, and Wild Mountain Thyme, and music from The Murphy Beds with Jefferson Hamer, Eamon O’Leary, and Cleek Schrey.

O’Neill Board Chair Carolyn Greenspan, Executive Director Tiffani Gavin, and National Playwrights Conference Artistic Director Melia Bensussen also spoke. “On almost any given night, somewhere in America, audiences experience stories that began on our stages,” Gavin said. The gala supports the O’Neill’s work developing new plays and musicals and giving artists the time and space to make them.

Image credit: Daniel Rader