Drama League Distinguished Performance Award

The Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance, originally known as the Delia Austrian Medal, is a theater award presented annually since 1935 by The Drama League for the "most distinguished" performance of the theater season.^[1] The award is named for theater reviewer Delia Austrian.^[2][3] An artist may only win the award once in their lifetime.^[4]

Winners

Year	Recipient	Work	Ref[1]
1935	Katherine Cornell	Romeo and Juliet	[5]
1936	Helen Hayes	Victoria Regina	[5][6]
1937	Maurice Evans	King Richard II	[5][7]
1938	Cedric Hardwicke	Shadow and Substance	[5]
1939	Raymond Massey	Abe Lincoln in Illinois	[5][8]
1940	Paul Muni	Key Largo	[5]
1941	Paul Lukas	Watch on the Rhine	[5][2]
1942	Judith Evelyn	Angel Street	[5]
1943	Alfred Lunt Lynn Fontanne	The Pirate	[5][9]
1944	Elisabeth Bergner[a]	The Two Mrs. Carrolls	[3]
1945	Mady Christians	I Remember Mama	[5]
1946	Louis Calhern	The Magnificent Yankee	[5]
1947	Ingrid Bergman	Joan of Lorraine	[5]
1948	Judith Anderson	Medea	[5]
1949	Robert Morley	Edward, My Son	[5]
1950	Grace George	The Velvet Glove	[5]
1951	Claude Rains	Darkness at Noon	[5]
1952	Julie Harris	I Am a Camera	[5]
1953	Shirley Booth	The Time of the Cuckoo	[5]
1954	Josephine Hull	The Solid Gold Cadillac	[5]
1955	Viveca Lindfors	Anastasia	[5]
1956	David Wayne	The Ponder Heart	[5]
1957	Eli Wallach	Major Barbara	[5]
1958	Ralph Bellamy	Sunrise at Campobello	[5]
1959	Cyril Ritchard	The Pleasure of His Company	[5]
1960	Jessica Tandy	Five Finger Exercise	[5]
1961	Hume Cronyn	Big Fish, Little Fish	[5]
1962	Paul Scofield	A Man for All Seasons	[5]
1963	Charles Boyer	Lord Pengo	[5]
1964	Alec Guinness	Dylan	[5][10]
1965	John Gielgud	Tiny Alice	[5]
1966	Richard Kiley	Man of La Mancha	[5]
1967	Rosemary Harris	The Wild Duck	[5]
1968	Zoe Caldwell	The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie	[5]
1969	Alec McCowen	Hadrian the Seventh	[5]
1970	James Stewart	Harvey	[5]
1971	Anthony Quayle	Sleuth	[5]
1972	Eileen Atkins Claire Bloom	Vivat! Vivat Regina!	[5]
1973	Alan Bates	Butley	[5]
1974	Christopher Plummer	The Good Doctor	[5]
1975	John Wood	Sherlock Holmes	[5]
1976	Eva Le Gallienne	The Royal Family	[5]
1977	Tom Courtenay	Otherwise Engaged	[5]
1978	Frank Langella	Dracula	[5]
1979	Frances Sternhagen	On Golden Pond	[5]
1980	Roy Scheider	Betrayal	[5]
1981	Ian McKellen	Amadeus	[11]
1982	Milo O'Shea	Mass Appeal	[12]
1983	Kate Nelligan Edward Herrmann	Plenty	[13]
1984	Jeremy Irons	The Real Thing	[14]
1985	Derek Jacobi	Cyrano de Bergerac and Much Ado About Nothing	[15]
1986	Bernadette Peters	Song and Dance	[16]
1987	James Earl Jones	Fences	[17]
1988	John Lithgow	M. Butterfly	[18]
1989	Pauline Collins	Shirley Valentine	[19]
1990	Robert Morse	Tru	[20]
1991	Stockard Channing	Six Degrees of Separation	[20]
1992	Glenn Close	Death and the Maiden	[20]
1993	Stephen Rea	Someone Who'll Watch Over Me	[20]
1994	Sam Waterston	Abe Lincoln in Illinois	[20]
1995	Cherry Jones	The Heiress	[21]
1996	Uta Hagen	Mrs. Klein	[22]
1997	Charles Durning Bebe Neuwirth	The Gin Game Chicago	[23]
1998	Brian Stokes Mitchell	Ragtime	[24]
1999	Kathleen Chalfant	Wit	[25]
2000	Eileen Heckart	The Waverly Gallery	[26]
2001	Mary-Louise Parker Gary Sinise	Proof One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	[27]
2002	Liam Neeson	The Crucible	[28]
2003	Harvey Fierstein	Hairspray	[29]
2004	Hugh Jackman	The Boy from Oz	[30]
2005	Norbert Leo Butz	Dirty Rotten Scoundrels	[31]
2006	Christine Ebersole	Grey Gardens	[32]
2007	Liev Schreiber	Talk Radio and Macbeth	[33]
2008	Patti LuPone	Gypsy	[34]
2009	Geoffrey Rush	Exit the King	[35]
2010	Alfred Molina	Red	[36]
2011	Mark Rylance	Jerusalem and La Bête	[37]
2012	Audra McDonald	Porgy and Bess	[38]
2013	Nathan Lane	The Nance	[39]
2014	Neil Patrick Harris	Hedwig and the Angry Inch	[40]
2015	Chita Rivera	The Visit	[41]
2016	Lin-Manuel Miranda	Hamilton	[4]
2017	Ben Platt	Dear Evan Hansen	[4]
2018	Glenda Jackson	Three Tall Women	[4]
2019	Bryan Cranston	Network	[42]
2020	Danny Burstein	Moulin Rouge!	[43]
2021	No Award Given due to the COVID-19 pandemic
2022	Sutton Foster	The Music Man	[44]
2023	Annaleigh Ashford	Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street	[4]
2024	Sarah Paulson	Appropriate	[45]
2025	Nicole Scherzinger	Sunset Boulevard	[46]

Notes

1. The Drama League website does not list Bergner as the recipient in 1944, instead listing Lynn Fontanne, who is listed in other sources as co-recipient with Alfred Lunt in 1943.