Below is a calendar of dates in 2024 when nominations and awards are announced, and ceremonies take place, for the major New York theater awards (and a few others), followed by an opinionated description and comparison of these awards. Learn, for example, the difference between the Drama Desk, the Drama League and the New York Drama Circle awards.
2024 Calendar of Major New York Theater Awards
Most nomination announcements happen in April. Most award announcements and ceremonies happen in May and June. The pandemic threw off the calendar for three years, but it’s returned more or less to normal now, with a few exceptions. I’ll be filling in this calendar, especially with links to results as they come in:
April 4 Lucille Lortel Award Nominations announced
April 22 Drama League Award nominations announced
April 23 Outer Critics Circle Award nominations announced
April 25 Broadway shows must open by this date to be eligible for 2024 Tonys
April 29 Drama Desk Award nominations announced
April 29 Chita Rivera Award nominations announced
April 30 Tony Award nominations announced
May 5 39th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards ceremony
May 6 Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists announced
May 9 Off Broadway Alliance nominations announced
May 13 Outer Critics Circle Award winners announced
May 13 New York Drama Critics Circle winners and citations
May 14 Theatre World Awards announced
May 17 90th annual Drama League Awards at Ziegfeld Ballroom
May 20 Chita Rivera Awards
May 23 73rd Annual Outer Critics Circle Awards ceremony
May 25 Off Broadway Alliance Awards announced
June 10 68th Annual Drama Desk Awards ceremony
June 10 78th Annual Theatre World Awards
June 16 77th annual Tony Awards at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater
June 18 Off Broadway Alliance Awards ceremony at Sardi’s
October 10 Nobel Prize in Literature announced
The Awards
The Tony Awards
The Tonys, established by the American Theatre Wing in 1947, were named after Antoinette Perry, an actress, director and producer — and co-founder of the American Theatre Wing, a non-profit organization that had begun in 1917 as the Stage Women’s War Relief. Now jointly administered by the Wing and the Broadway League (the national trade association for the Broadway theater industry), the Tony Awards annually honor work on Broadway, and are the only theater awards ceremony broadcast on television (locally since 1956, on a national TV network since 1967), which helps explain their prominence.
The broadcast this year will be split into two parts, with a “pre-show” entitled The Tony Awards: Act One, to air on Paramount’s free streaming service PlutoTV and feature select awards presentations. The main broadcast will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+ in the U.S. from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET on June 16, with host for the third time Ariana DeBose, live from Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater.
There are currently 26 competitive categories. Eight of the categories are for actors, divided by gender (for example, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play.) Because of changes by others in the past two years, the Tonys are now the only major New York theater awards with competitive categories that distinguish by gender.
There are also several special awards each year, for example, the Regional Theater Award and the Isabelle Stevenson Award honoring a member of the theater community for their humanitarian efforts, as well as Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theater and Lifetime Achievement Awards.
The Tony Awards selection process is arguably among the most transparent and democratic of the New York awards, which is more a comment on the lack of transparency and democracy in most of the others. The competitive nominees will be selected this year by a committee of 60 theater professionals serving three-year terms, who will meet after the Tony eligibility deadline, which this year is April 25.
Those 60 nominators will be among the approximately 831 voters who will select the winners, which includes theater producers and owners, representatives from various theater unions (for example, Actors Equity), talent agents, press agents, and just a handful of critics: In 2009, The Tonys announced they would no longer allow any theater critics to vote, arguing absurdly that, since critics could publicly advocate for shows, they had a conflict of interest. (Actually, critics were among the few voters without a financial interest in the outcome.) This caused such an outcry that the Tony administrators re-enfranchised the members of the New York Drama Critics Circle (see below) , but still banned the rest of us.
In the years since the Tony awards were created, “New York theater” has expanded way beyond Broadway. There are way more shows each year Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway, but they are completely ignored by the Tonys. The newer awards fill this obvious need.
Tony Awards website @TheTonyAwards
The Nobel Prize in Literature
This is neither a theater award nor a New York award, and far more novelists and poets than playwrights have been given the prize, which was first awarded in 1901. Indeed, only one American playwright has ever been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — Eugene O’Neill in 1936 — although he is not the only American Nobel Laureate with Broadway credits: Novelist Saul Bellow (1976) wrote two Broadway plays (“The Last Analysis” ran for 28 performances, “Under the Weather” for 12) and novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), is credited as the co-writer on two Broadway plays (“Yentl,” 223 performances, and “Teibele and Her Demon,” 25); songwriter Bob Dylan (2016) has had songs in five Broadway shows.
Non-American Nobel Laureates whose plays have been performed on Broadway include: Maurice Maeterlinck of Belgium (awarded in 1911), Gerhart Hauptmann of Germany (1912), George Bernard Shaw of Ireland (1925), Luigi Pirandello of Italy (1934), Wole Soyinka of Nigeria (1986), Dario Fo of Italy (1997), Harold Pinter of England (2005.)
This is widely considered the most prestigious award that a dramatist can get (It helps that it now comes with a cash award equivalent to more than a million American dollars.) I include it to provide a little perspective, especially on the next category.
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prizes were established in 1917 at Columbia University, and, although most of the awards are given for works of journalism, they included from the start one annual award for a new work by an American playwright that premiered either in New York or regionally within the previous calendar year. While this is a national award, it’s rare for the award to go to a show that hasn’t had a run in New York City. Those few that haven’t certainly get a New York production soon after winning. (Thanks to the pandemic, “Fat Ham” had run only as digital theater before it won the 2022 Pulitzer; then it was staged first Off-Broadway and then on Broadway.)
The winner and finalists are recommended by a different annual group of four theater critics and a theater academic, but can be overridden by the Pulitzer Board — which was infamously done in 1963, when the board rejected the jury’s choice of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and gave no award in drama that year — one of the 13 years in which there have been no Pulitzer in Drama awarded. (In later years, they did give Pulitzers to Albee for three subsequent plays.) In 2010, the board rejected all three of the jury’s recommendations, and chose the winner on its own, “Next to Normal.”
Lorraine Hansberry did not win for “A Raisin in the Sun” Indeed, before 1980, only six women had won Pulitzer Prizes in Drama. (The number is now up to 19.)
Stephen Sondheim won for “Sunday in the Park with George” but nothing else with which he was involved — not “West Side Story” or “Gypsy” or “Sweeney Todd”
Other works ignored by the Pulitzers that are now universally accepted as among the greatest ever written for the American stage include “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams; “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller and Rodger and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma”
Given this spotty track record and less than reassuring selection process, why has the Pulitzer Prize in Drama become widely accepted as the second most prestigious award that an American dramatist can receive? (See above for the most prestigious.) My theory: Since the Pulitzers are largely journalism prizes, they are the most publicized awards in the United States — journalists understandably wishing to toot their own horns.
Pulitzer Prize in Drama website @PulitzerPrizes
Drama Desk Awards
The Drama Desk was founded in 1949; it began presenting awards in 1955. The members of the Drama Desk are almost all theater critics and journalists.
The Drama Desk Awards this year has thirty-two competitive categories. It is the only New York award given by theater journalists and critics that consider Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway shows together in some of the same competitive categories. This has the advantage of giving attention to often-obscure nominees. For example, in 2013, Daniel Everidge was one of the nominees for Outstanding Actor in a Play for his role as a young man with autism in the Off-Broadway play, Falling — right up there with Tom Hanks, and Nathan Lane and Tracy Letts. You see the problem right away: The winners almost inevitably are the better-known (Broadway) competitors. In 2023, only two of the 34 Drama Desk Award winners were for shows not on Broadway — and one of those Off-Broadway productions had already moved to Broadway by the time the winners were selected.
Last year was the first time that the eight performer categories were not distinguished by gender. Instead of having a Lead Actor and a Lead Actress in A Play, for example, there are now two awards for “Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play.” The ten-member board made this change without prior consultation to the 100 general members, some of whom expressed concern that, without dedicated slots for actresses, women would get short-shrift. Results for the first year: Of the eight winning performers, three were women, three were men, and two identify as non-binary or gender-nonconforming (Those identifies were the reason why the change was made.)
Outer Critics Circle Awards
Founded in 1950, originally established as an alternative to the New York Drama Critics Circle (see below), The Outer Critics Circle is made up of theater critics and journalists from out-of-town, national and online publications. Its awards recognize both Broadway and Off-Broadway. There are 26 competitive categories.
There were two major changes made last year in the nine acting categories. As with the Drama Desk Awards, the Outer Critics Circle Awards no longer distinguish by gender. They also now have separate categories for Broadway and Off-Broadway (except for solo performance.) The results last year: Of the nine winners, five were men, two were women, two were non-binary/gender non-conforming.
The change was made by the 11-member Executive Committee, without consulting the 70-plus members in advance, which reflects the organization’s standard top-down approach. The membership does not get to elect the members of the Executive Committee — the committee members choose one another — and only Executive Committee members serve on the Nominating Committee. Unlike most other major awards, there is no rotation in the nominating committee. They do solicit recommendations for nominations from the other members.
The awards ceremony is a low key affair, which is only open to members and the winners.
New York Drama Critics Circle Award
Twenty-two critics, originally from what were deemed the major New York publications, make up the New York Drama Critics Circle, which was established in 1935 as an alternative to the Pulitzers. They meet each year on a single day to determine, and announce, the best play, foreign play, and best musical of the season, as well as usually a couple of “special citations.” They choose from any New York theater, and frequently pick Off-Broadway shows. There is unusual transparency in the awards process; they publish who chose what in each round of voting.
It’s bracing to notice how the organization has been forced de facto to change the definition of major critic and major publication, as their members keep on losing their jobs, sometimes their positions eliminated; some publications have even gone out of existence.
Drama Critics Circle Award website
Theatre World Awards
Every year since 1945, the Theatre World Awards have honored 12 performers (6 men, 6 women) making their New York stage debuts. This is in many ways the loveliest of awards, with now-famous alumni of the award recalling what it meant to them back when as they each introduce one of the newly awarded performers with whom they have a special connection. A veteran is also chosen each year for the John Willis Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Theatre World Awards website @TWAwards
Lucille Lortel Awards
The Lucille Lortel Awards were founded in 1985 by the Off-Broadway League, named after a prominent actor, and thus focuses exclusively on achievement Off-Broadway. They select a new playwright to get a star in the Playwrights Sidewalk in front of the Lucille Lortel Theater in the Village.
The Lortel Award nominees and winners are determined by a committee made up of representatives of the Off-Broadway League, Actors’ Equity Association, Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, United Scenic Artists, the Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation, in addition to theater journalists, academics and other Off-Broadway professionals.
They were the first of the New York theater awards to stop distinguishing their acting categories by gender.
Lucile Lortel Awards website @OffBroadwayNYC
The Obie Awards
Founded in 1955 by the Village Voice cultural editor, the Obie Awards annually honor Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway shows and individuals. After the Voice shuttered, the American Theatre Wing took over. There are no nominees for Obies, only winners, and, according to their press releases, “in the conviction that creativity is not competitive, the judges select outstanding artists and productions and may even invent new categories to reward artistic merit.”
Thrown out of whack by the pandemic, the 67 annual Obies took place this past January on cable TV, foregoing its usual in-person ceremony, purportedly to spend the money instead on grants to the winning artists.
If this is the most fluid of these annual awards, it also is the only one to honor the breadth and depth of New York theater beyond Broadway — to treat seriously the independent theater community (aka Off Off Broadway.)
And it’s expanding its reach. The 68th annual awards will consider not just Off and Off Off in-person theater, but “virtual, digital and audio work.” The date and venue (and if there is a venue) for the next Obies is not yet determined, but it will consider work that opens between September 1, 2023 and August 31, 2024.
The Drama League Awards annually selects winners in seven competitive categories involved in either Broadway or Off-Broadway productions, and also gives special awards. The awards are touted as “the oldest theatrical honors in America,” though this is dubious on several counts (They fudge their date of origin, claiming “first presented in 1922 and formalized in 1935.”) My view of the Drama League skyrocketed several years ago when they were the only one of these awards that acknowledged reality and stepped up to the moment, handing out most of their nominations and awards to digital theater created during the pandemic. Still, their normal awards are generally given less attention than the other major awards. The categories are overcrowded — there is just a single performing category (“distinguished performance”) with some 60 nominees but only one winner — and the voters are anybody who shells out the money to join the Drama League, no expertise or experience necessary.
The Off Broadway Alliance Awards
The Off Broadway Alliance Awards, founded in 2011 by the Off Broadway Alliance, give out awards in seven competitive categories. Why are there two organizations representing Off Broadway, and how is the Off Broadway Alliance different from the Off Broadway League (which administers the Lucille Lortel Awards, described above?) I couldn’t tell you, other than the Alliance is a newer organization. It’s also less transparent in its award process (an unnamed rotating committee made up of Alliance members.)
The Chita Rivera Awards
The Chita Rivera Awards are given by the NYC Dance Alliance Foundation for dance and choreographic excellence on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in film. Founded in 1982, it was first called the Fred Astaire Awards, and then the Fred and Adele Astaire Awards, changing its name eight years ago to honor the Tony-winning dancer, actress and singer, who died in January at the age of 91.
Chita Rivera Awards website @ChitaAwards
I include the Chita Rivera Awards as an example of the several specialized theater awards. There are many other New York theater awards — such as the Clive Barnes Award in Dance and Theater Actors Equity gives out a slew of annual awards.(I count 18 total from either the union or the Actors Equity Foundation.) The New York Innovative Theater Awards for Off-Off Broadway have ceased to exist, as has their sponsoring organization, the New York Innovative Theater Foundation (the 15th annual NYITA in 2019 was their last), but the League of Independent Theaters last year replaced it with a much less ambitious “New York Independent Theater Award,” and plans to announce a new list of honorees this summer and then hold a New York Theater Independent Theater Awards 2024 ceremony sometime in September.
New theater awards seem to be created each year. Galeca, the society of LGBTQ entertainment critics, which has been giving out annual Dorian Awards honoring exceptional films and TV shows since 2010 , last year created a “theater wing” of New York drama critics and started an annual Dorian Theater Award, “honoring the best of Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, mainstream to LGBTQ+” (Their second annual awards.) In March, I announced my fourth annual American Connected Theater Awards, ACTA, begun on the first anniversary of the pandemic shut-down to honor innovation in digital theater.
A wag might say that theater awards have proliferated in inverse proportion to theater’s significance in the culture. But that, like many observations during theater award season, is unfair. Whatever else theater awards do or do not do, they offer several benefits: 1. The awards ceremonies often serve as fundraisers for the sponsoring non-profit organizations, several of which support the theater community in a myriad of other ways. 2. The nominations and awards occasionally offer validation and encouragement to those who deserve it. 3. They spark attention and conversation.
