Writer, director, and longtime Vineyard seasonal resident James Lapine received a lifetime achievement award at Sunday night’s Tony Awards. Lapine’s impressive contribution to the world of theater dates back to when he was a photography and graphic design student and got a gig designing a poster for the Yale School of Drama, which was founded by another longtime Vineyarder, the late Robert Brustein. Lapine received Tony awards for “Into the Woods,” “Falsettos,” and “Passion,” and won the Pulitzer Prize for “Sunday in the Park with George.”
Lapine has workshopped several of his plays on the Vineyard, including “Act One,” which premiered on Broadway in 2014 and got five Tony nominations — one of them was for actor Tony Shalhoub, another seasonal Vineyard resident.
In 2021, Lapine published the book “Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created ‘Sunday in the Park with George,’” which became a N.Y. Times bestseller. He also made the 2022 documentary film “In the Company of Rose,” about Rose Styron.
Given his successes, Lapine remains endearingly modest, and during the acceptance speech for his award, he talked about the importance of failure.
“It’s not about how successful you are, it’s about how much heart you put into what you do,” he said. He recalled a seasoned producer telling him, “Kid, you won’t be in the theater until you have your first flop.” Lapine went on to say, “We have to be willing to fail, as much as we want to succeed, and we probably learn more from our failures than our successes, so to stand here today it’s not like, you know, I haven’t had my heartfelt disappointments, but I’ve never regretted them. I’ve never regretted anything I’ve done. I’ve learned from everything I’ve done.”
Before signing off, Lapine paid tribute to his wife Sarah Kernochan, who is an awardwinning writer as well. “The greatest honor is being able to thank you,” he said.
Congratulations to James Lapine from all of us at The MV Times and Islanders Write.