Linda Lavin, Brian Dennehy, James Lapine & More Tapped for Theater Hall of Fame

Actors Linda Lavin and Brian Dennehy and writer/director James Lapine are among those who will be inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame on January 24. Pia Lindstrom will host the event at the Gershwin Theater, where the Hall of Fame members have their names permanently inscribed on a wall outside the auditorium. Presenters will include directors Hal Prince and Robert Falls.

Also included on the list of honorees are actor Fritz Weaver, director Michael Blakemore, musical director Paul Gemignani, playwright Caryl Churchill and the late writer/director Joseph Chaikin.

Lavin received a Tony Award for Broadway Bound and has received five additional nominations including last season's Collected Stories. She can currently be seen in Lincoln Center Theater's Other Desert Cities.

Dennehy received Tony Awards for Long Day's Journey Into Night and Death of a Salesman and most recently starred in Broadway revivals of Desire Under the Elms and Inherit the Wind.

Lapine received Tony Awards for the books of Passion, Into the Woods and Falsettos as well as a Pulitzer Prize for Sunday in the Park With George. He is set to direct a revival of Annie in 2012.

Weaver is a Tony winner for Child's Play and received an additional nomination for The Chalk Garden. His most recent New York stage appearance was in the off-Broadway revival of The Voysey Inheritance.

Blakemore received a pair of Tony Awards in 2000 for directing the musical revival of Kiss Me, Kate and the Broadway premiere of Copenhagen. Most recently, he directed the Broadway revival of Blithe Spirit.

Gemignani, known for his work on the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, received a 2001 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. His many credits include Evita, Into the Woods and the upcoming The People in the Picture.

Churchill's plays include Top Girls, Cloud Nine, A Number, Serious Money and Drunk Enough to Say I Love You.

Chaikin, who passed away in 2003, wrote plays that include The War in Heaven and Struck Dumb.