(NEW YORK, NY) -- Drama Desk Executive Producers Staci Levine and Jessica R. Jenen announced that stage and screen stars Sutton Foster and Aaron Tveit will host the 2024 Annual Drama Desk Awards on Monday, June 10, 2024 beginning at 6:15pm at NYU Skirball Center (556 LaGuardia Place). The Tony Award winning actors recently starred together in Sweeney Todd on Broadway.
2-time x 2 Tony® Award and Drama Desk Award winner for Thoroughly Modern Millie and Anything Goes, Sutton Foster also won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Shrek the Musical. She has also starred on Broadway in Grease, Annie, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Violet, and The Music Man. She reprised her role in Anything Goes at The Barbican Theatre in London and also starred in “Bunheads” on ABC Family and “Younger” on TV Land. Sutton will soon appear as Princess Winnifred on Broadway in Once Upon a Mattress, reprising her performance from City Center Encores!
Aaron Tveit starred on Broadway in Moulin Rouge, winning the 2020 Tony® Award, and also appeared on Broadway in Hairspray, Wicked, Next to Normal, Catch Me If You Can, and was featured in the National Tour of RENT as well as the London production of Assassins at The Menier Chocolate Factory. Aaron also starred in “Schmigadoon” on Apple TV+. Aaron will be making his Café Carlyle debut in June.
The creative team for this year’s Drama Desk Awards has also been announced. Lorin Latarro (The Who’s Tommy; The Heart of Rock and Roll) will direct the evening and Steve Rosen & David Rossmer (The Other Josh Cohen) will be writing the show, with musical direction by Annbritt duChateau (Once Upon a Mattress; Some Like It Hot), lighting design by Jeremy Cunningham (Kinky Boots), sound design by Daniel Gerhard (An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin), and video design by Ido Levran (The Lifespan of Fact). Joshua Helman (Appropriate; How I Learned to Drive) is the technical supervisor and Julia Jones (Back to the Future: The Musical) is the production stage manager.
As previously announced, New Jersey native Nathan Lane will receive the Harold S. Prince Award and Lincoln Center’s André Bishop will receive the William Wolf Award.
The Harold S. Prince Award recognizes an individual for a lifetime achievement of outstanding contributions to the theatre and the new William Wolf Award commemorates the career of the late entertainment journalist, theater and film critic, and inspiring teacher, who was a longtime president of the Drama Desk. This award has been founded to recognize achievement, high standards, and innovation, including generosity and “giving back” to the entertainment community.
The complete list of nominations can be found here.
David Barbour and Charles Wright are the Drama Desk co-presidents.
“We’re delighted Sutton Foster and Aaron Tveit are hosting this year’s Awards to toast this theater season of abundance,” said Drama Desk co-presidents David Barbour and Charles Wright. “Our audience is in for a real treat!”
The Drama Desk Awards are the only major New York City theater awards for which productions on Broadway, Off Broadway, and Off Broadway compete against each other in the same categories.
As was the case last year, all performance categories are gender-free. The updated gender-free categories are: Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play, Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical, Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play, and Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical.
What sets the Drama Desk Awards apart is that they are voted on and bestowed by theater critics, journalists, editors, and publishers covering theater. The Drama Desk Awards honor all aspects of New York’s professional theater.
A limited number of tickets have been made available for the general public. To purchase tickets, please CLICK HERE.
The Drama Desk was founded in 1949 to explore key issues in the theater and to bring together critics and writers in an organization to support the ongoing development of theater in New York. The organization began presenting its awards in 1955, and it is the only critics’ organization to honor achievement in the theater with competition among Broadway, Off Broadway, and Off-Off Broadway productions in the same categories.
All Drama Desk officers and nominating committee members perform their various services for the organization on a voluntary basis. The organization takes pride in announcing that the awards are then voted on “by impartial media people only,” without any vested interests in the results. Today, 100 New York theater critics, reporters, writers, and arts editors vote on the awards.
