Tony Awards to Honor The Normal Heart Scribe Larry Kramer with Isabelle Stevenson Award

The Tony Awards will honor playwright Larry Kramer (The Normal Heart) with the Isabelle Stevenson Award at the 2013 ceremony on June 9.

Kramer, who penned the 2011 Tony winner for Best Revival of a Play, will be recognized for his substantial contributions to the theatre community, notably with The Normal Heart, his groundbreaking portrayal of the HIV/AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s.

The play premiered off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 1985, and was revived in London and Los Angeles. It opened on Broadway in April 2011 with Ellen Barkin, Jim Parsons, Lee Pace, Joe Mantello and John Benjamin Hickey. HBO is currently developing a film adaptation of The Normal Heart, directed by Ryan Murphy and starring Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts, Parsons, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch and Jonathan Groff.

Kramer’s other work includes the plays Sissies’ Scrapbook, Just Say No, The Destiny of Me and A Minor Dark Age; the Academy Award-nominated film Women in Love; non-fiction works including Reports from the holocaust: the making of an AIDS activist and The Tragedy of Today’s Gays; and the forthcoming 3,000-page novel The American People.

Past recipients of the Isabelle Stevenson Award include Phyllis Newman, David Hyde Pierce, Eve Ensler and Bernadette Peters.