The Tony Awards Administration Committee announced today that three pillars of the theatre community - André Bishop, Jules Fisher, and James Lapine - will each receive the 2026 Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.

“How lucky are we to have such a wealth of deserving talent, whose lifetimes of contributions left us unable to select just one recipient of this prestigious honor,” said Jason Laks, President of the Broadway League and Heather Hitchens, President & CEO of the American Theatre Wing. “The work that André, Jules, and James have done, and continue to do, will leave an indelible mark for generations to come. They are each a constant source of inspiration and we look forward to celebrating them at Broadway’s biggest night.”

André Bishop served as the Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theater from January 1992 until June 2025, and Producing Artistic Director from July 2013 until June 2025. Before arriving at Lincoln Center Theater, Mr. Bishop served as Playwrights Horizons’ Artistic Director for ten years and as its Literary Manager for six. His many successful productions at that theater included the original productions of three Pulitzer Prize winners: The Heidi Chronicles, Driving Miss Daisy, and Sunday in the Park with George.

Under his direction, Lincoln Center Theater productions included a number of memorable New York, U.S., and world premieres including The Coast of Utopia, The Invention of Love, and Arcadia by Tom Stoppard; Oslo and Blood and Gifts by J. T. Rogers; Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang; The Royale by Marco Ramirez; The Light in the Piazza by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel; The Sisters Rosensweig by Wendy Wasserstein; The Substance of Fire and Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz; Contact by Susan Stroman and John Weidman; Via Dolorosa by David Hare; Parade by Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown; 4000 Miles by Amy Herzog; War Horse by Nick Stafford; Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau; and Greater Clements by Samuel D. Hunter. LCT’s noteworthy revivals under his aegis include the William Finn and James Lapine musical Falsettos; Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I, South Pacific, and Carousel; August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone; Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! and Golden Boy; Edward Albee’s Seascape and A Delicate Balance; Shakespeare’s Henry IV; Paul Osborn’s Morning’s at Seven; The Heiress by Ruth and Augustus Goetz; and Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert E. Sherwood.

Mr. Bishop has won countless theater awards, including 16 “best production” Tony Awards, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2012.

In addition to working on LCT’s education department and magazine (Lincoln Center Theater Review), Mr. Bishop is proudest of the building of the lovely Claire Tow Theater on top of the Beaumont at Lincoln Center, the LCT3 program there whose mission is to produce the work of young writers, directors and designers, and the commissioning of new work with the Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Bishop is on many boards including the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, the Kleban Foundation, Ten Chimneys, and MasterVoices.

Lighting designer Jules Fisher is considered the “gold standard” of the artform, conceiving and designing concurrently for Broadway, film, the music industry, and digital animation. In a Broadway career spanning more than 60 years, he has designed more than a hundred plays and musicals and has been honored with nine Tony Awards and 25 nominations. Among his celebrated Broadway designs are the original versions of Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Pippin, Ragtime, Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk, Angels in America, Assassins, and The Iceman Cometh starring Denzel Washington.

Film lighting designs have been seen on Dreamgirls with director Bill Condon, on Rob Marshall’s Best Picture winner Chicago, and Richard Linklater’s School of Rock, among other projects. Evolving naturally into dramatic and fantastical lighting in the digital realm, his musical lighting scenes have been conceived for CG environments in the live-action Beauty and the Beast  and Aladdin, as well as development projects for DreamWorks Animation.

Fisher created inventive lighting before and throughout the evolution of digital lighting sources for such diverse artists as David Bowie, Kiss, Parliament-Funkadelic, Whitney Houston, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Simon and Garfunkel.

In addition to entertainment, Fisher is a founder of the architectural lighting design firm Fisher Marantz Stone, which has designed landmark projects such as the Getty Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Washington Monument; the National Gallery of London; the renovation of Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall; and most recently, the Obama Presidential Center. Perhaps most notably they have also created the now iconic “Tribute in Light” at the World Trade Center Memorial.

Fisher also founded Fisher Dachs Associates, one of the world's foremost, forward-thinking, and experienced Theatre Planning and Design consulting firms. FDA's projects include the recent transformation of David Geffen Concert Hall at Lincoln Center, opera houses in Toronto, Korea, Miami, and St. Petersburg, the Stephen Sondheim Theater on Broadway, new theaters for the Guthrie Theater, Stratford Festival, Old Globe, and the soon-to-open Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival theater in Garrison NY, as well as unique projects like refitting the Park Avenue Armory to accommodate large scale performance, and many others.

Fisher holds a bachelor’s degree in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a 2015 Honorary Doctorate. His lighting design company, with partner Peggy Eisenhauer, is known as Third Eye, which conceives and designs lighting for all forms of entertainment.

His hobby and vice are a lifelong interest in “magic”, leading him to consult for many of the top magicians including the late Ricky Jay, David Blaine, Harry Blackstone Jr. What better cause to wonder and amaze?

James Lapine is a playwright and director whose work has been performed on Broadway 18 times. He has been nominated for 12 Tony Awards in four different categories and has won on three occasions for his librettos for Falsettos, Into the Woods and Passion. He collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Passion and the revue Sondheim on Sondheim and with William Finn on Falsettos, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, A New Brain, and Little Miss Sunshine. He is also the author of five plays including his adaptation of Moss Hart’s Act One for Lincoln Center Theater. Lapine has also worked frequently off-Broadway and at regional theaters and has directed four feature films. His HBO documentary Six By Sondheim received a Peabody Award and an Emmy nomination for direction. He also has won five Drama Desk Awards and Sunday in the Park with George received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He has been inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

Some of the luminaries previously honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award include Harvey Fierstein, Carol Channing, Graciela Daniele, Joel Gray, Jane Greenwood, Sheldon Harnick, Julie Harris, Rosemary Harris, Jerry Herman, James Earl Jones, John Kander, Angela Lansbury, Marshall W. Mason, Terrence McNally, Jack O’Brien, Harold Prince, Chita Rivera, Marian Seldes, Stephen Sondheim, Tommy Tune, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Harold Wheeler, and George C. Wolfe.