The Drama League Awards unveiled their slate of winners at an in-person ceremony on Friday, May 17. The event was hosted by Frank Dilella at the Ziegfeld Ballroom, where attendees toasted the best of Broadway and Off-Bradway.
The biggest winner of the day was Sarah Paulson, who claimed the coveted Distinguished Performance Award for her fiery role in “Appropriate.” That play, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, also took home the League’s trophy for Best Revival of a Play.
See 2024 Dorian Theater Awards nominations announced: LGBTQ journalists champion ‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ ‘Stereophonic,’ ‘Oh, Mary!‘
The Distinguished Performance Award is unique in that a performer may only win the award once in their career. After prevailing, they are never eligible again. The category is also a massive catch-all race that includes actors of all genders, roles of all sizes, and both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. This year, 54 thespians were included as nominees.
Winning...
The biggest winner of the day was Sarah Paulson, who claimed the coveted Distinguished Performance Award for her fiery role in “Appropriate.” That play, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, also took home the League’s trophy for Best Revival of a Play.
See 2024 Dorian Theater Awards nominations announced: LGBTQ journalists champion ‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ ‘Stereophonic,’ ‘Oh, Mary!‘
The Distinguished Performance Award is unique in that a performer may only win the award once in their career. After prevailing, they are never eligible again. The category is also a massive catch-all race that includes actors of all genders, roles of all sizes, and both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. This year, 54 thespians were included as nominees.
Winning...
- 5/17/2024
- by Sam Eckmann
- Gold Derby
The nominees for the 2024 Drama League Awards were announced April 22, 2024, by Vanessa Williams and past Drama League winner Bebe Neuwirth. Winners will be announced during the 90th Annual Drama League Awards ceremony at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on Friday, May 17.
These kudos honor both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions and are famous for their catch-all acting category, the Distinguished Performance Award. An actor can only win it once in their career. After they have won, they can never be nominated again. This year, a whopping 54 performers are nominated.
See 2024 Tony Awards eligibility rulings (round 2): ‘Appropriate’ is officially a revival, ‘The Notebook’ actors split up
The expansive production categories mean that many Tony Awards hopefuls heard their name called this morning. Ten Broadway musicals were nominated in the Outstanding Production of a Musical race. Notable omissions include “Back to the Future: The Musical,” “The Great Gatsby” and critical darling “Days of Wine and Roses...
These kudos honor both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions and are famous for their catch-all acting category, the Distinguished Performance Award. An actor can only win it once in their career. After they have won, they can never be nominated again. This year, a whopping 54 performers are nominated.
See 2024 Tony Awards eligibility rulings (round 2): ‘Appropriate’ is officially a revival, ‘The Notebook’ actors split up
The expansive production categories mean that many Tony Awards hopefuls heard their name called this morning. Ten Broadway musicals were nominated in the Outstanding Production of a Musical race. Notable omissions include “Back to the Future: The Musical,” “The Great Gatsby” and critical darling “Days of Wine and Roses...
- 4/22/2024
- by Sam Eckmann
- Gold Derby
The critically acclaimed play Fat Ham won over audiences on Broadway last year and now the show is making its L.A. debut at the Geffen Playhouse.
Nearly the entire original cast has reunited to perform the play for Los Angeles audiences.
Here’s the synopsis: “Meet Juicy, a young, queer Black man with a Shakespearean-sized dilemma. When the ghost of his dead father shows up at his family’s BBQ wedding reception demanding his murder be avenged, does the poetic and sensitive Juicy have it in him to do the deed, or will he ‘to thine own self be true?’”
Fat Ham stars Marcel Spears as Juicy, Nikki Crawford as Tedra, Chris Herbie Holland as Tio, Billy Eugene Jones as Rev/Pap, Adrianna Mitchell as Opal, Benja Kay Thomas as Rabby, and Matthew Elijah Webb as Larry.
The play was written by James Ijames and directed by Sideeq Heard...
Nearly the entire original cast has reunited to perform the play for Los Angeles audiences.
Here’s the synopsis: “Meet Juicy, a young, queer Black man with a Shakespearean-sized dilemma. When the ghost of his dead father shows up at his family’s BBQ wedding reception demanding his murder be avenged, does the poetic and sensitive Juicy have it in him to do the deed, or will he ‘to thine own self be true?’”
Fat Ham stars Marcel Spears as Juicy, Nikki Crawford as Tedra, Chris Herbie Holland as Tio, Billy Eugene Jones as Rev/Pap, Adrianna Mitchell as Opal, Benja Kay Thomas as Rabby, and Matthew Elijah Webb as Larry.
The play was written by James Ijames and directed by Sideeq Heard...
- 4/3/2024
- by Just Jared
- Just Jared
James Ijames’ defiant and raucous play Fat Ham, now at the American Airlines Theater on Broadway, begins in transition. Relics of a recent funeral are slid into corners to make space for tributes to a celebratory future. The scene, designed by Maruti Evans, is set for a cookout: Smoke rises languorously from a grill, snakes up the red brick wall and disappears behind the curtain. Tables are cloaked with the signature blue and red checkered plastic linings of summer parties and picnics. Mismatched balloons dot the verdant green grass. In a corner stands a wreath honoring the recently deceased.
Juicy, the mercurial protagonist played with relaxed style by Marcel Spears, reluctantly prepares to celebrate the marriage of his mother, Tedra (Nikki Crawford), to his uncle, Rev (Billy Eugene Jones). His dad, Pap (also played by Jones), hasn’t been dead for a week and the newlyweds behave as though he never existed.
Juicy, the mercurial protagonist played with relaxed style by Marcel Spears, reluctantly prepares to celebrate the marriage of his mother, Tedra (Nikki Crawford), to his uncle, Rev (Billy Eugene Jones). His dad, Pap (also played by Jones), hasn’t been dead for a week and the newlyweds behave as though he never existed.
- 4/19/2023
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Like that relative who picks through the chicken parts at a family picnic to find the leg or the breast or the thigh with just the right amount of crisp, playwright James Ijames has no reluctance to rummage through the bones of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to cook up the irresistible Fat Ham.
Audacious at points, quietly amenable at others, the Pulitzer Prize winning comedy carries the burden of our expectations more lightly than some other prize recipients who’ve made their way to Broadway recently, including Between Riverside and Crazy, Cost of Living and even A Strange Loop, the stage work that Fat Ham shares its concerns over masculinity (mostly of the toxic variety ), queerness, and the search for – or insistence upon – love and acceptance within the family and, very specifically, the Black faith community.
Inspired by, and borrowing its groundwork from, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fat Ham and its author swipe plot points,...
Audacious at points, quietly amenable at others, the Pulitzer Prize winning comedy carries the burden of our expectations more lightly than some other prize recipients who’ve made their way to Broadway recently, including Between Riverside and Crazy, Cost of Living and even A Strange Loop, the stage work that Fat Ham shares its concerns over masculinity (mostly of the toxic variety ), queerness, and the search for – or insistence upon – love and acceptance within the family and, very specifically, the Black faith community.
Inspired by, and borrowing its groundwork from, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fat Ham and its author swipe plot points,...
- 4/13/2023
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
The Broadway-bound comedy Fat Ham and Shakespeare in the Park’s Merry Wives are among this year’s recipients of the 66th Obie Awards honoring Off and Off-Off Broadway productions.
Presented by the American Theatre Wing, the Obies will be handed out Monday evening in a ceremony at Manhattan’s Terminal 5 venue. Sustained and Lifetime Achievement winners will accept their awards during the ceremony, while remarks of all other winners will premiere on the the American Theatre Wing’s YouTube channel.
The most recent Obies ceremony was virtual and premiered on the Wing’s YouTube channel on July 14, 2020.
“For this Obies, the judges reviewed over 400 productions over the last three seasons including digital and audio works made during the pandemic,” said Heather Hitchens, President & CEO, in a statement. “We look forward to finally gathering in person to celebrate the artistic excellence and resilience of the amazing artists and theatre companies...
Presented by the American Theatre Wing, the Obies will be handed out Monday evening in a ceremony at Manhattan’s Terminal 5 venue. Sustained and Lifetime Achievement winners will accept their awards during the ceremony, while remarks of all other winners will premiere on the the American Theatre Wing’s YouTube channel.
The most recent Obies ceremony was virtual and premiered on the Wing’s YouTube channel on July 14, 2020.
“For this Obies, the judges reviewed over 400 productions over the last three seasons including digital and audio works made during the pandemic,” said Heather Hitchens, President & CEO, in a statement. “We look forward to finally gathering in person to celebrate the artistic excellence and resilience of the amazing artists and theatre companies...
- 2/24/2023
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Emmy winner and Tony nominee Colman Domingo, whose new Netflix series The Madness was given the go-ahead yesterday, has plenty of room on his plate for Fat Ham.
Domingo has signed on as co-producer of the upcoming Broadway production of James Ijames’ Pultizer Prize winning play Fat Ham.
Beginning performances on Tuesday, March 21 the American Airlines Theatre Fat Ham has an official opening night of Wednesday, April 12 for a strictly limited 14-week engagement through Sunday, August 6.
The play, which has been described as a “comic tragedy,” reinvents Shakespeare’s Hamlet by setting it at a backyard cookout where Juicy, a queer, Black Southern college kid grappling with questions of identity, is met by the ghost of his father who shows up demanding that Juicy avenge his murder, even as Juicy is trying to break the cycles of trauma and violence in service of his own liberation.
Fat Ham on...
Domingo has signed on as co-producer of the upcoming Broadway production of James Ijames’ Pultizer Prize winning play Fat Ham.
Beginning performances on Tuesday, March 21 the American Airlines Theatre Fat Ham has an official opening night of Wednesday, April 12 for a strictly limited 14-week engagement through Sunday, August 6.
The play, which has been described as a “comic tragedy,” reinvents Shakespeare’s Hamlet by setting it at a backyard cookout where Juicy, a queer, Black Southern college kid grappling with questions of identity, is met by the ghost of his father who shows up demanding that Juicy avenge his murder, even as Juicy is trying to break the cycles of trauma and violence in service of his own liberation.
Fat Ham on...
- 2/9/2023
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Like mariners shipwrecked in “The Tempest,” tormented by a conspiring God, or Macbeth at Dunsinane, the cast and crew of Shakespeare in the Park’s “Merry Wives” faced promethean odds. As told in the new HBO Max documentary “Reopening Night,” the Public Theater’s endeavor to open “Merry Wives” as the first large-scale theater event in New York City last summer was as Shakespearean as its subject.
“And here I was thinking this was going to be a boring documentary,” playwright Jocelyn Bioh, who reset the comedy among a diasporic African community in Harlem, told Variety last week at an intimate premiere for the new doc.
“Theater was the last thing on my mind,” she said, recounting when director Saheem Ali first asked her to retool the little known comedy into a needed telling of Black joy. “There were big questions for me: Why should we be doing this right now?...
“And here I was thinking this was going to be a boring documentary,” playwright Jocelyn Bioh, who reset the comedy among a diasporic African community in Harlem, told Variety last week at an intimate premiere for the new doc.
“Theater was the last thing on my mind,” she said, recounting when director Saheem Ali first asked her to retool the little known comedy into a needed telling of Black joy. “There were big questions for me: Why should we be doing this right now?...
- 12/22/2021
- by Michael Appler
- Variety Film + TV
Shakespeare in the Park, a free summer production produced by New York’s Public Theater, had never skipped a season in its sixty plus year history until Covid-19 shut down the world in 2020. So when the annual signpost of summer, held at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, returned after a yearlong hiatus earlier this year, New Yorkers rejoiced. The reopening was a milestone not just for the city and the theater community, but for civilization at large, which is in part why filmmaker Rudy Valdez (“The Sentence”) documented the triumphant return.
The result is Valdez’s “Reopening Night” premiering on HBO on Dec. 20. The documentary chronicles The Public’s 12-week journey to navigate an obstacle-filled path to the opening night of Shakespeare in the Park’s “Merry Wives” in August 2021. Set in a South Harlem community of West African immigrants, the play is an adaptation of the Shakespeare comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor.
The result is Valdez’s “Reopening Night” premiering on HBO on Dec. 20. The documentary chronicles The Public’s 12-week journey to navigate an obstacle-filled path to the opening night of Shakespeare in the Park’s “Merry Wives” in August 2021. Set in a South Harlem community of West African immigrants, the play is an adaptation of the Shakespeare comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor.
- 12/20/2021
- by Addie Morfoot
- Variety Film + TV
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