Drama Desk Awards

This year’s Drama Desk Awards were produced by Scott Mauro/Scott Mauro Entertainment and the show is being written by six-time Emmy Award winner Bruce Vilanch.
Drama Desk honors Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. Here are just a few of the winners. To see the complete list go to www.dramadeskawards.com

Outstanding Play
**Prayer for the French Republic, by Joshua Harmon, Manhattan Theatre Club

Outstanding Musical
**Kimberly Akimbo, Atlantic Theater Company

Outstanding Revival of a Play
**How I Learned to Drive, Manhattan Theatre Club

Outstanding Revival of a Musical
**Company

Outstanding Actor in a Play
**Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Lackawanna Blues, Manhattan Theatre Club

Outstanding Actress in a Play
**Phylicia Rashad, Skeleton Crew, Manhattan Theatre Club

Outstanding Actor in a Musical
**Jaquel Spivey, A Strange Loop

Outstanding Actress in a Musical
**Joaquina Kalukango, Paradise Square

Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play
**Ron Cephas Jones, Clyde’s, Second Stage Theater

Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play
**Francis Benhamou, Prayer for the French Republic, Manhattan Theatre Club

Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical
**Matt Doyle, Company

Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical
**Patti LuPone, Company

Outstanding Director of a Play
**Rebecca Frecknall, Sanctuary City, New York Theatre Workshop

Outstanding Director of a Musical
**Marianne Elliott, Company

Outstanding Choreography
**Bill T. Jones, Garrett Coleman, and Jason Oremus (Irish + Hammerstep), Gelan Lambert and Chloe Davis (associates), Paradise Square

Outstanding Solo Performance
**Kristina Wong, Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, New York Theatre Workshop

Unique Theatrical Experience
**Seven Deadly Sins, Tectonic Theater Project & Madison Wells Live

Harold S. Prince Lifetime Achievement Award
In four decades as playwright, novelist, actor, and director, Alice Childress (1912-1994) challenged racism with engrossing stories and memorable characters. When a New York producer demanded revisions to soften the impact of Trouble in Mind, after an initial run Off Broadway and prior to its Broadway debut, Childress withdrew the script. Sixty-five years later, the Drama Desk celebrates the long-delayed Broadway premiere of this timeless masterpiece and salutes Childress as a towering figure in contemporary theater history.

Ensemble Award
In Six, Adrianna Hicks, Andrea Macasaet, Brittney Mack, Abby Mueller, Samantha Pauly, and Anna Uzele bring to musical life the women who married England’s King Henry VIII. The fanciful result is a buoyant dramatization of their individually purposeful and collectively empowering journeys.

The Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Award
This season, as a woman hiding her brother from the Taliban in Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul and an English instructor straddling two very different cultures in Sanaz Toossi’s English, Marjan Neshat embodied disparate characters so fully that it was hard to recognize the single actor in the two roles. Whether in drama or comedy, Neshat mines the playwright’s text for a vast panoply of emotions that yield vivid, intricate portrayals of the parts she undertakes.