Mexodus Tops Lortel Winners

Nygel D. Robinson and Brian Quijada  in Mexodus. 
Credit: Curtis Brown

Mexodus, the two-character musical about African-American migration from the salve states to Mexico, won the most awards at the 2026 Lortel Awards, presented on May 3. The show currently played at the Daryl Roth Theater after an earlier engagement at the Minetta Lane, took four awards including Outstanding Musical, Director, Lead Performance in a Musical (Nygel D. Robinson who also co-wrote the chow with castmate Brian Quijada), and Sound Design. Jordan Tannahill's Prince Faggot was voted Outstanding Play. The Awards presented for excellence in Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theater were distributed in a ceremony at NYU Skirball hosted by Alex Moffat (“SNL,” “Bigfoot!”) and presenters Patrick Ball (“The Pitt,” “Becky Shaw”), Maya Boyd (“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”) Susannah Flood (“Liberation”), Stephanie Hsu (“The Rocky Horror Show,”) Aasif Mandvi (“Fallen Angels,”), and Lea Michele (“Chess”). The Lucille Lortel Awards are produced by the Off-Broadway League and Lucille Lortel Theatre, with additional support provided by TDF. 

Special honorees this year include Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Mia Katigbak, performer and founder of the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), whose honor was presented by Francis Jue; and legendary composer and lyricist William Finn, who was posthumously inducted onto the famed Playwrights’ Sidewalk with a tribute performance featuring frequent Finn collaborators Carolee Carmello, Lilli Cooper, Mary Testa, and Chip Zien, and presented by David Stone and James Lapine. In addition, the Off-Broadway League presented George Forbes with the first ever Paul Libin Leadership Award, a new annual honor recognizing a member of the Off-Broadway League who exemplifies extraordinary leadership, whether over the course of a distinguished career or through a singular moment of impact, mentorship, and service to the Off-Broadway community. The In Memoriam segment was accompanied by a performance of Bobby Darin’s “The Curtain Falls” by Isa Briones, currently appearing in “Just in Time” on Broadway.

Mexodus and Prince Faggot Top Lortel List

Nygel D. Robinson and Brian Quijada  in Mexodus. 

Credit: Curtis Brown

Theater award season has officially begun with the announcement of the 41st annual Lucille Lortel Awards for excellence in Off and Off-Off-Broadway theater on April 1. Amber Gray and Harvey Guillén currently starring in The Rocky Horror Show made the announcement from Sardi's. The awards will be presented on May 3 at NYU Skirball. The musical Mexodus, which opened at the Minetta Lane earlier this season and is now playing a second engagement at the Daryl Roth Theater, lead the nominations with nine including for Outstanding Musical. Prince Faggot by Jordan Tannahill, which opened at Playwrights Horizons and later played the Seaview Studio, received the most nominations for a play with six. The Lortel  nominating committee saw 98 Off-Broadway shows in the 2025–2026 season, with 41 receiving nominations. The Outer Critics, Drama League, Drama Desk and Tonys nominations will soon follow.

A complete list of Lortel nominees follows:

Outstanding Play

Cold War Choir Practice, by Ro Reddick
Kyoto, by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson
THE MONSTERS, by Ngozi Anyanwu
Mother Russia,by Lauren Yee
Prince Faggot, by Jordan Tannahill

Outstanding Musical
BIGFOOT!, book by Amber Ruffin and Kevin Sciretta, lyrics by Amber Ruffin, music by David Schmoll and Amber Ruffin
Mexodus, by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson
My Joy Is Heavy, by The Bengsons
Night Side Songs, words and music by The Lazours
Saturday Church, book and additional Lyrics by Damon Cardasis and James Ijames, music by Sia, additional music by Honey Dijon

Class Is Head of the Class at Lortels

The cast of Our Class

Our Class, Tadeusz Slobodzianek's epic play about a 1941 massacre of Jews in a Polish village as seen through the eyes of 10 classmates, was the big winner at the Lortel Awards, winning four. The play which was produced at BAM last season and revived at CSC this season, won for Outstanding Revival, Ensemble, Director, and Scenic Design. The 40th annual awards for excellence in Off-Broadway theater named for the legendary producer Lucille Lortel were presented on May 4 at NYU Skirball. Presenters included Kandi Burruss, Lea DeLaria, Jay Ellis, Stephanie Nur, J. Harrison Ghee, Ilana Glazer, Maya Hawke, and Alaska Thunderfuck.

Here There Are Blueberries, another play dealing with the Holocaust, was named Outstanding Play and Three Houses won for Outstanding Musical. Kara Young and Michael Rickshawn of Table 17 were named Outstanding Lead and Featured Performers in a Play. Sarin Monae West of Medea: Re-Versed and Paris Nix of The Big Gay Jamboree won for Outstanding Lead and Featured Performers in a Musical.

A list of winners followed:

Drag, Houses, and Our Class Lead Lortel Award Noms

Jujubee, Jan Sport, Alaska Thunderf*ck, and
Nick Laughlin in Drag: The Musical.
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Let theater awards season begin with the Lortel nominations, the first prize-dispensing of the season. Drag: The Musical, Three Houses and Our Class received the most Lortel Award nominations for Off-Broadway with a total of six each. The nominations were read by Francis Jue (Yellow Face) and Krysta Rodriguez (Smash) on April 2. The awards will be presented on May 4 at NYU Skirball. The event is open to the public and tickets may be purchased at Tickets.nyu.edu and at the NYU Skirball box office. The awards are named for legendary producer Lucille Lortel. They are presented by the Off-Broadway League and the Lortel Theater with support from TDF. The nominations are determined and the winners voted on by a committee of representatives of unions, the Off-Broadway League, theater journalists, academics and other Off-Broadway professionals. 70 productions from the 2024-25 season were considered eligible. A complete list of the nominees follows:

Outstanding Play
Here There Are Blueberries
Liberation
Sumo
The Antiquities
We Had a World

Outstanding Musical
Drag: The Musical
Medea: Re-Versed
The Big Gay Jamboree
Three Houses
We Live in Cairo

(pray), Comeuppance Win Big at 39th Lortels

(pray) won 3 Lortel Awards
Credit: Ben Arons

(pray), the musical on faith presented by Ars Nova and National Black Theater, and The Comeuppance by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, were the big winners at the 39th Lortel Awards, winning Outstanding Musical and Play respectively. (pray) won the most awards with 3, also taking Outstanding Director and Ensemble. The awards for outstanding Off-Broadway theater and named for the legendary producer Lucille Lortel were presented on May 5 at the NYU Skirball Center. 

Hosts included Rosalind Chao (Atlantic Theater Company’s “What Became of Us”), Jenn Colella (“SUFFS”), Michael Esper (The Creator, Drama Desk Award nominee, “Appropriate”), Eden Espinosa (Tony Award nominee, “Lempicka”), Nikki M. James (Tony & Lortel Award nominee, “SUFFS”), and BD Wong (Atlantic Theater Company’s “What Became of Us”). 

Special honorees this year included Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Ruben Santiago-Hudson, presented by Phylicia Rashad; Playwrights’ Sidewalk inductee Dominique Morisseau, presented by Kamilah Forbes; and Ars Nova, honored for their Outstanding Body of Work with a presentation by award-winning director Anne Kauffman.

The Lortels are the first theater awards to be presented this season, the Outer Critics, New York Drama Critics Circle, Theater World, Drama Desk and finally the Tonys will follow in the next weeks.

The Comeuppance was named 
Outstanding Play at the Lortels
Credit: Monique Carboni

A list of winners and nominees follows:

Wet Brain Dominates 39th Lortel Award Noms

Wet Brain from Playwrights Horizons
and MCC Theater, received the most
Lortel nominations.
Credit: Joan Marcus

Wet Brain, John J. Caswell's Jr.'s play about a Hispanic family dealing with the father's alcoholism and delusions of being kidnapped by aliens, co-produced by Playwrights Horizons and MCC Theater, received the most nominations for the 39th annual Lucille Lortel Awards for Off-Broadway excellence, with 8. The nominations were announced April 4 by Amber Iman and George Abud, stars of the Broadway musical Lempicka. The Lortels, named for the legendary Off-Broadway producer, will be presented on May 5 at the NYU Skirball Hall. The event is open to the public and tickets are available starting April 11 at tickets.edu.nyu or at the NYU box office, Tues.-Sat., 12-6PM. 

Other productions with strong showings include Stereophonic with 7 and (pray) and Dead Outlaw with 6 each.

Lortel, Bistro, MAC Award Dates Announced

Ruben Santiago-Hudson
will receive a Lifetime Achievement
Award at the Lortels

The 39th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards – honoring excellence in the Off-Broadway theater – will be handed out in the annual ceremony on Sunday, May 5, 2024, at 7PM at NYU Skirball. Special Award recipients for 2024 have also been announced. The Lortel Awards are produced by the Off-Broadway League and the Lucille Lortel Theatre, with additional support provided by TDF.

Special Award honorees include actor-director Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Lackawanna Blues, Jitney) for Lifetime Achievement; Dominique Morriseau (Skeleton Crew, Sunset Baby) will receive the Playwrights Sidewalk Honor outside the Lucille Lortel Theater; and Ars Nova for Outstanding Body of Work. 

Nominees for the Lortels will be announced on April 4 and there will be a Nominees Breakfast on April 17. The Lortels are presented for Off-Broadway work from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024. . Representatives of the Off-Broadway League, Actors’ Equity Association, Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, United Scenic Artists, the Lucille Lortel Theatre, in addition to theatre journalists, academics and other Off-Broadway professionals, serve on the Voting Committee (though no members' names are listed in the press release or on the Lortels' website.)

The event will, as always, be open to the public, with tickets available for purchase beginning April 4 at tickets.nyu.edu or at the NYU Skirball box office Tuesday – Saturday 12pm–6pm. As always, the Lortel Awards is a benefit for the Entertainment Community Fund and fans are encouraged to make donations at LortelAwards.org.

B'way Update: DD Changes Rules; Critic-Playwright Mario Fratti Dies

The Drama Desk Awards are joining the Outer Critics Circle, the Lortels and the Independent Spirit Awards in eliminating gender distinction in their performance categories. Several regional theatre awards such as the Helen Hayes Awards in Washington, DC, the Barrymores in Philadelphia, and the Jeffs in Chicago have also gone gender-neutral. The Drama Desk is an organization of approximately 100 New York-based theater critics, reporters and editors which presents the only theater awards honoring work on, Off- and Off-Off-Broadway equally in multiple categories. (Full disclosure: I am a Drama Desk member and former President). In a recent email, the DD board informed its members that male and female distinctions for acting awards would be taken away. Previously there were 8 acting categories (four each for plays and musicals) plus one for solo performance which was always gender-neutral. In addition to the solo category, there will now be four acting slots--Outstanding Lead and Featured Performance in a Play and Outstanding Lead and Featured Performance in a Musical. There will be two winners in each category, so the number of acting awardees will remain the same. 

2022 Theater Awards--ALL the Acting Winners and Nominees

With award season over after Sunday night's presentation of the Tony Awards and Tuesday's Drama Desk ceremony, here's a summary of all the NY theater acting nominees and winners for 2021-22. Winners are capitalized and nominees are in lower case. Some performances such as Phylicia Rashad in Skeleton Crew and Jesse Tyler Ferguson in Take Me Out have been placed in different categories (lead or featured) by different groups. That is noted in the parentheses. The only awards not yet presented are the Chita Rivera Awards for outstanding dance performances which will be given out on June 20, so only nominees are listed. There were a few nominees for the Chitas from previous seasons such as Adrienne Warren in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. I only included nominees for the current 2021-22 season. The only major award missing is the Obie Awards. According to the Obie Awards website, they will not take place until November 2022 and will include Off and Off-Off-Broadway productions from July 1, 2020 to Aug. 31, 2022. 

Guide to abbreviations=
Bayfield=St. Clair Bayfield Award for performance in a Shakespearean role
Calloway=Joseph Calloway for performance in a classic play
CD=Clarence Derwent Awards for newcomers in featured roles
CR=Chita Rivera Awards for dance performances (nominees only)
DD=Drama Desk
DL=Drama League
L=Lortel Awards for Off-Broadway
OCC=Outer Critics Circle
RS=Richard Seff Awards for veteran performers
TW=Theater World Awards, for newcomers and those making their Broadway or Off-Broadway debuts.

Outstanding Actor in a Play
Patrick J. Adams, Take Me Out (occ, TW)

Simon Russell Beale
in The Lehman Trilogy.
Credit: Mark Douet

Simon Russell Beale, The Lehman Trilogy (OCC, TONY)
W. Tre Davies, Tambo and Bones (l)
Brandon J. Dirden, Skeleton Crew (dd--lead, occ--featured)
Adam Godley, The Lehman Trilogy (occ, tony)
Adrian Lester, The Lehman Trilogy (occ, tony)
Jacob Ming-Trent, Merry Wives (dd)
David Morse, How I Learned to Drive (tony)
Sam Rockwell, American Buffalo (occ, tony)
Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Lackawanna Blues (DD, tony)
John Douglas Thompson, The Merchant of Venice (dd)
David Threlfall, Hangmen (tony)

B'way Update: Girl Returns; POTUS Moves Up; Lortel Dates

Cast of Girl from the North Country
Credit: Matthew Murphy

April is almost upon us. That's the month when critics' datebooks are choked with openings in order to beat the deadline for the Tony Awards which has recently been announced as April 27. After two years of COVID, the awards will return to their traditional date of early June (June 12 to be precise). To complicate matters, the Bob Dylan musical Girl from the North Country is re-opening at the Belasco for 50 performances only. Performances will begin on Friday, April 29^th and will run through Saturday, June 11^th. Girl closed at the Belasco on Jan. 23 due to dropping sales during the omicron COVID surge. It's probably re-opening for such a short time in order to increase its Tony chances and jog voters' memories. The cast will return except for Marc Kudish who is committed to the new musical version of Trading Places at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. His role of the broken-down businessman with a mentally-challenged son will be taken over by Craig Bierko (Tony nominee for the last Broadway revival of The Music Man). 

Theater Awards and Streaming in the Age of COVID

Theater and the arts continue despite the coronavirus pandemic. Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday was

Performers in Take Me to the World:
A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration
Credit: Broadway.com

commemorated with Take Me to the World, a spectacular web-based quilt of performances presented by Broadway.com on April 26 and now available on YouTube. Though live performances on or Off-Broadway may not return for months, the annual award-dispensing free-for-all goes on, in different forms. The only prize-giving entity not heard from as of yet is the biggest of them all, the Tony Awards. This shows the fundamental difference between the Tonys and all other awards. While the Drama Desks, Outer Critics, Obies and Lortels are voted on by relatively small groups of Gotham-based critics and some industry insiders who will have seen all the eligible shows, a significant portion of the Tony electorate is made up of out-of-town road producers who come into New York at the end of the season to view as many candidates as possible. With no shows on, these people can't vote for anything. (The rest of the Tony voters are NYC producers, the board members of the various theatrical unions and about 20 members of the New York Drama Critics Circle.) In addition, the Tonys are not only a ceremony to honor artistic excellence, they are also a commercial TV venture to push Broadway's product. Again if there are no shows to push, CBS and the producers have no reason to put on a show, even a digital one with presenters and winners Zooming in.