ART Gets Special Tony For Its `Vibrant Theatre'

The Harvard-afiliated American Repertory Theatre has been awarded a 1986 Special Tony Award for its "continued excellence in resident theatre," the award committee announced yesterday.

Harvey Sabinson of the American Theatre Critics Association, which nominates candidates for the Special Tony Award, said that the decision to select ART was "quite decisive." Candidates for the award this year included the Center Stage of Baltimore, the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the Syracuse Stage.

The nominating committee called ART "the most vibrant and exciting theatre in New England today," Sabinson said, and praised ART director Robert S. Brustein for his "intellectual rigor" and the imaginativeness of the company's repertoire.

The ART has staged plays by Samuel Beckett, Pirandello, Genet and Robert Wilson. It has also premiered plays by younger dramatists, such as Christopher Durang and Don DeLillo.

Media Event

Robert Brustein, who founded the ART in 1966 and currently serves as its director, will attend the 40th annual Tony Awards ceremony to receive the award. The presentation will be naitonally televised on CBS at 9 p.m. on June 1. The Award carries a $15,000contribution from American Express.

The Special Tony will be the second award to bereceived by Brustein on behalf of the ART thisyear. In November he received the Jujamcyn TheatreAward "for outstanding contribution to thedevelopment of creative talent for the theatre.

Past recipients of the Special Tony Awardinclude the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicagoand the Gutherie Theatre of Minneapolis