Honoring Tony Award-winning comedian, actor, songwriter and playwright Cole Escola, author of Broadway hit “Oh, Mary!” with the Erwin Piscator Award, commemorating Piscator’s lasting influence on theater on both sides of the Atlantic.

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The non-binary artist Cole Escola will be presented with the Erwin Piscator Award 2025 for their outstanding achievements as a comedian, actor, singer, and playwright, and for being one of the leading voices in queer theater.
Most recently Cole Escola starred in the smash hit Broadway play Oh, Mary!, which they also wrote, and for which Cole received the 2025 Tony award for Best Performance by Actor for a Lead Role in a Play. The play has broken box office records at the Lyceum Theatre and received two Tony Award nominations, a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Special Citation, a Drama Desk Award, a Theatre World Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, and an OBIE Award. The play was also named a 2025 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama.

Entertainment Weekly called Cole Escola's American farce “the funniest play on Broadway” and elaborates: “what makes Oh, Mary! such a fulfilling theatrical experience is that it also has a real message about the dangers of repression, both societal and personal. Letting people express themselves and live their truth may not solve every political problem, but it can certainly make life way more fun. Escola’s doing that, and the rest of us should too.”
The US comedian, actor and singer John Early will give the remarks on Cole Escola. John Early appeared in the series 30 Rock as Jenna Maroney's son and in the independent film Fort Tilden. He starred in Search Party, which aired on TBS and HBO Max from 2016 to 2022. The film Maddie's Secret, Early's debut as a director, had its world premiere in September at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Internationally acclaimed playwright Doug Wright (I am my own wife) is the Master of Ceremonies.

Admission: $ 500 (tickets are tax-deductible for the full amount less $ 100)

Erwin Piscator (1893 - 1966) was one of the most original and influential directors and producers of theater in the 20th century, not just in the German-speaking lands where his career began, but also in the United States, where he took refuge in mid-century New York.
More than just a man of the theater, Piscator was an exemplary man in dark times — his passion for fierce art forms that challenged the status quo was never dimmed by his episodic struggles against political persecution. In Europe in the 1920s and 30s, he collaborated with playwrights like Bertolt Brecht, composers like Hanns Eisler, and visual artists like John Heartfield and Wieland Herzfelde. During his time in New York, Piscator founded the Dramatic Workshop at The New School in 1940 and trained myriad actors, including Marlon Brando, Judith Malina, Tony Curtis, Tony Randall, Elaine Stritch, Ben Gazzara, and Harry Belafonte.
He continued to be active in Germany in the 1950s and 60s, crowning his career by producing a trio of provocative new plays as artistic director of the Freie Volksbühne Berlin: Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy; Heiner Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Peter Weiss’s The Investigation.

Date and Time: Thursday, October 23, 2025 at 6.30 pm

Location: The Lotos Club, 5 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065

More Information: https://lahrvonleitisacademy.eu/events/current-upcoming/