Daryl Roth is no stranger to accolades. She holds the singular distinction of producing six Pulitzer-winning dramas, and she’s also been behind dozens of other honored productions over the past twenty years. Her latest prize: The 2010 Lucille Lortel Award for Lifetime Achievement.

“Receiving an award for lifetime achievement makes me feel so old,” she laughs, “but it’s a great honor to have been chosen.”

Roth had always been an avid theater-goer, and often dreamed of producing. Her first opportunity came in the late 1980’s when songwriters Richard Maltby and David Shire invited her to listen to new project they were creating. Though Roth was older than the typical neophyte producer, she jumped at the opportunity to produce Closer Than Ever, which became a critical and popular darling of the 1989-1990 Off-Broadway season. Daryl Roth’s theatrical career was off and running: since then she has produced over two dozen Broadway shows, and another forty productions Off-Broadway.

Roth admits that she has eclectic taste (her current work load include such disparate productions as The Temperamentals; Love, Loss, and What I Wore; Come Fly Away; Fela!; A Little Night Music; and Enron), but she identifies several common threads running through her work. “I love plays with strong women at their core, like Wit and The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. I’m also drawn to plays that explore gay identity; my son Jordan is gay, so it’s important for me to present work that illuminates and brings an understanding to that world. I’m fascinated, too, with family dynamics and the ways plays like August: Osage County and The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? show how people choose to co-exist with each other.”

Moreover, Roth is driven by the quality of the writing, and produces by gut instinct. “If a play is fascinating to me, perhaps others will be fascinated and engaged by it, too.”

Indeed, few would have gambled on a play about an English professor dying of ovarian cancer (the Pulitzer-winning success Wit, a play Roth credits with changing many people’s lives), or a drama depicting the see-saw between mathematical genius and mental illness (another Pulitzer Prize-winner, Proof, which maintained its integrity through three different casts on Broadway).

Michael Urie and Thomas Jay Ryan in Roth's The Temperamentals.

Roth is dedicated to bringing new audiences to the theatre and making the art form as welcoming as possible. Her production of Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics held special appeal for Latinos, and Love, Loss, and What I Wore has drawn female audiences of all generations. Roth sees the importance of reaching out to young people too, and has established a home for children’s series at her DR2 Theatre featuring the perennial favorite Dear Edwina. Also very enthusiastic about facilitating American playwrights’ work, Roth has established The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, an annual prize given to a theatre artist who has demonstrated exceptional talent and promise in his or her field.

Roth insists that her proudest achievements are her children Jordan (now President of Jujamcyn Theatres, the third-largest owner/operator of Broadway theatre) and Amanda (a social worker), but her affection for theatre runs a close second, as she lovingly mentions show after show, including her first Pulitzer-winner, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women. Roth observed that she has seen a number of challenges that have arisen in the past twenty years. “Broadway musicals can now cost between $14 to $15 million to produce, with plays capitalized between $2 and $3 million. Also, it’s more important to have star power behind productions."

Roth is a big fan of Off-Broadway, where “you’re not as reliant on having a big star; all you need is a great play and a talented, skilled ensemble.” She sees Off-Broadway in a period of renaissance, as productions which may not be economically viable on Broadway are still able to serve audiences on a somewhat smaller scale, including the recent transfer of main stem hits Avenue Q and The 39 Steps have done.

Thirteen years ago, seeing a shortage of Off-Broadway spaces, she converting an 1840s bank building on Union Square East into the Daryl Roth Theatre (home for many years to her production of De La Guarda, and now to Fuerza Bruta) with adjoining performance spaces the DR2 Theatre and the D-Lounge.

In addition to tending to her six currently-running productions, Roth is transforming the film Kinky Boots into a new musical (to feature a score by Cyndi Lauper, book by Harvey Fierstein, and direction by Jerry Mitchell), and is developing Rupert Holmes’ stage adaptation of John Grisham’s bestselling novel A Time to Kill. As if that weren’t enough, My Dog: An Unconditional Love Story, her documentary film that examines the unique relationships between humans and their dogs, has just been released on DVD; 20% of the profits for this film will go to various animal charities, including the ASPCA.

But above all, Daryl Roth is passionate about theatre. “I’ve tried to produce work that inspires and challenges audiences to open their hearts and minds. There’s really nothing like theatre.”