The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for the 1996-97 season will be awarded to Ben Brantley, chief drama critic of The New York Times; Elinor Fuchs, author of The Death of Character (Indiana University Press); and Todd London, artistic director of New Dramatists, an organization devoted to the encouragement of new plays, and a columnist forAmerican Theater magazine, at a reception at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on Friday, March 20.

The Nathan Award, designed to "stimulate intelligent playgoing," has been given annually since 1958 for "the best piece of dramatic criticism, whether article, essay, treatise or book" published during the theatrical year. The prize of $10,000 is considered one of the richest and most distinguished in the American theater. The award is administered by the Cornell University Department of English, under the terms of a trust established by George Jean Nathan (1882-1958), author and critic, who graduated from Cornell in 1904.

The winner is selected by a committee consisting of the chairs of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton and Yale universities and an expert on dramatic criticism from each department. The committee is led by Jonathan Culler, chair of Cornell's Department of English.

The committee considers, based on its own surveys and submitted nominations, works by authors, critics and reviewers who are U.S. citizens and whose works are published in books, newspapers, magazines or other periodicals, or broadcast on television or radio.

For 1996-97 the Nathan Committee has divided the prize among the entrants in its three categories: Brantley for newspaper reviewing, Fuchs for a book publication and London for his periodical article "Mamet vs. Mamet" in American Theater (July/August 1996).

The committee citation reads:

Brantley: "As chief theater critic of The New York Times, Ben Brantley has brought to the daily review a generosity of spirit to match his sharpness of insight. Equally fluent in straight drama, musicals and the avant-garde, Brantley is descriptively precise, critically even-handed and imbued with a sense of the whole: both the individual work and the theater at large."

Brantley has been a theater critic at The New York Times since 1993. He was named chief theater critic, succeeding Vincent Canby, in June 1996.

Fuchs is a theater scholar, critic and award-winning playwright who teaches at Columbia University and Yale School of Drama. In addition to The Death of Character, which also was cited by Choice magazine as the outstanding book in its field in 1996, her books include Plays of the Holocaust: An International Anthology and, with historian Joyce Antler, the documentary play Year One of the Empire, which won the Drama-Logue best play award for its Los Angeles production.

Fuchs: "Elinor Fuchs' The Death of Character, published by Indiana University Press, stands out for its range and boldness in reappraising 20th-century drama from the perspective of the avant-garde theater. Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg and Brecht are thus re-evaluated through the achievements of Beckett, Robert Wilson, the Wooster Group, Richard Foreman and performance artists such as Annie Sprinkle and Laurie Anderson. The result is provocative, controversial and solidly based on recent theater practices."

London: "A shrewd analyst of the theatrical scene, Todd London's contributions to American Theater have impressed the Nathan Committee over the years. In 'Mamet vs. Mamet' (American Theater, July/August 1996), he offers a provocative and telling analysis of the ways in which the playwright's three professional identities -- as dramatist, director and theorist -- often work at cross purposes."

London writes about theater and the arts for publications here and abroad and has taught drama at Harvard and New York University. A contributor to American Theater, The Village Voice and other arts magazines, he is former managing editor of American Theaterand artistic director of New Dramatists, the nation's oldest organization for the support of playwrights.

"Each of these critics has done outstanding work in encouraging reflection on the contemporary theater and contributed to the lively debates that it was George Jean Nathan's aim to encourage," Culler said.

Previous winners of the Nathan Award include Walter Kerr (1963) and Mel Gussow (1978), both of The New York Times, Kevin Kelly (1992) of the Boston Globe, John Lahr (1969, 1974) of The New Yorker, Robert Brustein (1961, 1986), Elizabeth Hardwick (1966) and Richard Gilman (1970).

George Jean Nathan presided over the development of serious American drama and its audience for the period of their formative growth, from 1910 to 1950. In a widely syndicated drama column, then in Smart Set and American Mercury, which he founded with H.L. Mencken, Nathan brought new sophistication to American dramatic criticism. He saw the critic as the essential link between the ideal of drama and the vagaries of the living art form, and he hoped to keep the ideal alive in establishing this important award for critical writing.