Drama League Awards Date and Venue Set for 2022

The 88th Annual Drama League Awards will be presented at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on May 20, 2022 at 12:00PM ET. The annual luncheon ceremony and its pre-event industry reception resumes in-person festivities with this 2022 awards event, after presenting the 2020 and 2021 awards in virtual ceremonies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nominations for the 2021-2022 Broadway and off-Broadway season will be announced on April 22, 2022. Productions will need to have been in previews between March 16, 2021 and April 20, 2022 to be eligible.

“We’ve all learned in this time how important being together is. It is the lifeblood of the theater, and the reason so many have made it an irreplaceable part of their lives,” said Drama League Artistic Director Gabriel Stelian-Shanks in a statement. “As the oldest theatrical honors in North America, The Drama League Awards in 2022 will celebrate the greatest talent in the world, the revival and return of our industry, while reveling in the joy that comes from being together again, at last!”

Among the highlights of the 2022 ceremony will be the historic inclusion of the first competitive awards for Outstanding Direction of a Play and Outstanding Direction of a Musical.

The 2021 ceremony focused on digital theatrical productions released during the COVID-19 pandemic. Broadway.com's star-studded Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration won the Drama League Award for Outstanding Digital Concert Production. The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels In America, which streamed exclusively from Broadway.com's YouTube channel on October 8, 2020 to benefit amfAR's Fund to Fight COVID-19, won the award for Outstanding Digital Theater, Individual Production.

Moulin Rouge! The Musical Tony winner Danny Burstein was named the most recent winner of the Drama League's Distinguished Performance Award on June 18, 2020. First awarded in 1922 and formalized in 1935, the Drama League Awards are the oldest theatrical honors in America. They are the only major theater awards chosen by a cross-section of the theater community—specifically, by the industry professionals, producers, artists, audiences and critics who are Drama League members nationwide.