The 69th Drama Desk Awards ceremony will take place on June 1 at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. Nominations for the awards, which honor Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway productions, will be announced on April 30.
To be eligible for the 2025 honors, production must open between April 26, 2024 and April 27, 2025.
For the first time in the awards body’s history, the net proceeds of the ceremony will benefit the Entertainment Community Fund, the national nonprofit that provides services and emergency funds to workers in the entertainment industry.
“We are thrilled to be back again this year executive producing the Drama Desk Awards and honored to be benefiting the essential Entertainment Community Fund to raise much needed funds, particularly as our colleagues in the nonprofit community face so much uncertainty for continued support,” said ceremony co-executive producers Staci Levine and Jessica R. Jenen in a joint statement. “It is especially gratifying to produce an event which celebrates the remarkable artistry gracing our stages in a manner that is fully inclusive to our entire NYC theater community, and entirely gender neutral.”
For the third consecutive year, the acting categories will not be specified by gender. Performance categories will comprise Outstanding Leading Performance in a Play, Outstanding Leading Performance in a Musical, Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play and Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical. Each category will allow for twice as many nominees as the former gendered categories, and each category will have two winners. A tie will result in more than two winners in a category.
The Drama Desk was founded in 1949 by New York theater writers, critics and publishers with the goal of increasing awareness and clout of the New York theater scene. The organization hosted its first awards ceremony in 1955 as the Vernon Rice Awards, named in honor of the former New York Post theater critic. The moniker was later changed to the Drama Desk Awards.
The 2024-2025 Drama Desk nominating committee is led by chair Martha Wade Steketee; committee members include Linda Armstrong, Daniel Dinero, Peter Filichia, Kenji Fujishima, Raven Snook and Charles Wright.
The Drama Desk is led by co-presidents Wright and David Barbour.
At the 2024 Drama Desk Awards, “Stereophonic” was named Outstanding Play, while “Dead Outlaw,” which is slated for a Broadway transfer in April, won the award for Outstanding Musical.
