Drama Desk 2023 Nominations Date; Genderless categories

https://broadwaynews.com/2023/04/17/drama-desk-awards-will-have-genderless-acting-categories-nominations-date-announced/

The Drama Desk Awards, honoring artistic excellence on Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway, have announced several updates for its 2023 ceremony. For the first time, all performance categories will be gender-free. Nominations in all categories will be announced on April 27.

The 67th annual Drama Desk Awards will recognize achievements from the 2022-2023 theater season.

The updated gender-free categories are: Outstanding Leading Performer in a Play, Outstanding Leading Performer in a Musical, Outstanding Featured Performer in a Play and Outstanding Featured Performer in a Musical.

Each of these categories will have twice as many nominees as the former gendered categories. The categories will also have two winners each. If there is a tie, there may be more than two winners in a category.

Additional details about this year’s ceremony, including a date and venue, will be announced in the coming weeks.

In addition to the Drama Desks, the Outer Critics Circle Awards have also announced genderless acting categories.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Donna-McKechnie-And-Frank-DiLella-To-Announce-2023-Drama-Desk-Award-Nominations-20230425

The 67th Annual Drama Desk Awards will be held on Tuesday afternoon, June 6 at Sardi's Restaurant, it was announced today by Drama Desk co-presidents David Barbour and Charles Wright. The cutoff for this year's Awards is April 26.

The nominations will be announced on April 27 in the 12pm noon hour by NY1 "On Stage" host Frank DiLella and Broadway icon Donna McKechnie on Spectrum News NY1's "News All Day" with anchor Ruschell Boone.

Wow, didn't expect them to announce them before they have their 'ceremony' but overall, very pleased with the winners! Especially Miriam Silverman and Shucked's score. Anyone have insight into how much this affects Tony chances/shares the same voters?

The Drama Desk Awards is a prestigious theatre award honouring the performing arts on Broadway, off-Broadway and beyond New York City. An update that will make all categories genderless is an exciting approach. This means that actors will compete against each other regardless of gender. This is a positive step towards equality and recognition of talent regardless of gender. And will the judges evaluate the gender of the actor without prejudice? Would they consider it masculinity or femininity to play a particular role? This is an important topic that deals with gender relations and social expectations of masculinity. I came across one resource https://eduzaurus.com/free-essay-samples/toxic-masculinity/ that covers these topics. After re-reading them, I concluded that whether judges are ready for such deep understandings. Because in our time everything is decided not only by talent but perhaps by something else.

Updated On: 6/28/23 at 01:43 PM

The DD, and other awards, need to stop pandering only to actors. If categories are genderless, as many have been for years outside of the actors, then designers, directors etc. deserve the same now - or double the amount of nominees.