Jan Maxwell (Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

Congratulations to Jan Maxwell, who yesterday was nominated for not one but two Tony Awards for the 2009-2010 season: one for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play (for The Royal Family) and a second for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play (for Lend Me a Tenor, which is now on Broadway). It’s quite a trick, and in the 63-year history of the Tonys she is only the fourth actress to garner double nominations in a single season.

But Broadway and Tony aficianados will probably be surprised to learn that Ms. Maxwell is also one of the foremost performers of the work of Howard Barker in the United States. She is a founding member (with Richard Romagnoli and Robert Emmet Lunney) of The Barker Project, won a Drama Desk nomination for her performance as Galactia in the 2008 Potomac Theatre Project’s production of Scenes from an Execution, and was a revelation in the title role of Barker’s Judith in a reading for the 21-for-21 festival of the playwright’s work last year.

Which makes us doubly glad that she’ll taking her valuable and no doubt hectic time out to join us for the Howard Barker at the Segal Center event next Monday, where she’ll be discussing Barker’s work in a panel discussion that will also include Romagnoli and Lunney, and reading a scene from Barker’s Gertrude — The Cry, directed by the Red Bull Theater‘s artistic director Jesse Berger.

I’m grateful that Ms. Maxwell will provide a welcome dose of Broadway lustre and glamour to our proceedings, and again offer my sincere congratulations to her.