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NYC VIBE at the 63rd Annual

Drama Desk Awards Nominations

May 2018 – Nominations for the 63rd Annual Drama Desk Awards were announced by actress and singer Jane Krakowski and Tituss Burgess in the Theater District.

The Broadway revival of “Carousel” and the new musical “SpongeBob SquarePants” led the list of nominations with “Carousel” grabbing a dozen including outstanding musical revival while “SpongeBob” landed eleven – among them also for outstanding musical. “Mean Girls” — the only other Broadway show competing with “SpongeBob” for new musical in this year’s Drama Desks  — scored ten nominations. Among plays, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” already an awards-favorite in London, took eight, while the high-profile revival of “Angels in America,” starring Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane, walked away with seven.

The Drama Desks are one of a number of theater awards that are near on the calendar to the Broadway-focused Tony Awards. The Drama Desks, however, serve as an indicator of who might win a Tony, since the they consider Off Broadway shows eligible to compete against Broadway productions. This year, one of the Broadway’s season’s biggest contenders, “The Band’s Visit,” didn’t make the Drama Desk list because it would have been eligible last year for its Off Broadway staging.

In keeping with the Drama Desk’s mission, nominators considered shows that opened on Broadway, Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway during the 2017-2018 New York theater season. Eligibility and award category designations for the productions under consideration this season were determined by the Drama Desk Board of Directors with recommendations from the Nominating Committee. In determining eligibility of “The Band’s Visit”, which ran Off Broadway last season, the nominating committee considered only those elements that constituted new work. For all other eligible productions, nominations are consistent with opening night credits.

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.