Off Broadway Obie Awards To Ditch Annual Ceremony In Favor Of Winner Grants, Ending 68-Year Tradition

Greg Evans

25 January 2024 at 1:25 pm·2-min read

The Obie Awards, the venerable honors for outstanding Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway productions, is doing away with its annual ceremony and will instead use the funds to provide winners with grants ranging from $1,000-$5,000.

Heather Hitchens, the president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing, which presents the Obies, called the grants a new path forward for the awards, saying the move “genuinely reflects the ethos of the Awards as well as the Off & Off Off Broadway movements – which is to continuously evolve and meet the moment.”

More from Deadline

Select winners of this year’s 67th Obie Awards will be announced Saturday on New York’s Spectrum News NY1 as a special presentation of the channel’s On Stage program hosted by Frank DiLella. The special airs at 7:30 p.m./ET.

“The grants and our relationship with Spectrum News NY1 will provide meaningful support, and more effective, nationwide promotion for these incredible artists, innovators, and theater companies,” Hitchens said. The awards ceremony has not traditionally been televised.

The Obies were created by the Village Voice shortly after the newspaper’s inception in 1955, and have become a significant New York tradition and perhaps the most important booster of the city’s non-Broadway theater scene, essentially the Off Broadway counterpart to Broadway’s Tony Awards. The long list of ceremony hosts has included Shelley Winters (the first, in 1956), Colleen Dewhurst, Elaine May, Groucho Marx, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Harvey Fierstein, Cynthia Nixon, S. Epatha Merkerson, Lea DeLaria, Rachel Bloom and, last year, Crystal Lucas-Perry.

Included in the On Stage special, which will take an in-depth look at Obie history, will be the announcement and presentation of awards in the Playwriting, Direction, and Performance categories. The pre-recorded acceptance speeches of the winners will be aired during the special, and then will be available, along with a complete list of winners, at ObieAwards.com.

Guests on the special will include Tony Award nominee and Obie Award winner actor Kara Young (Purlie Victorious, Cost of Living); Hitchens; and Tony- and Obie Award-winning playwright and librettist David Henry Hwang, a former Chair of The American Theatre Wing.

Spectrum News NY1 is available to Spectrum subscribers on channel 1 and also via the Spectrum News App.

This year’s awards recognize works presented throughout the 2022-2023 Off- and Off- Off-Broadway theater season. More than 300 productions were considered for awards.

In 2014, the American Theatre Wing, which co-presents the Tonys along with the Broadway League, became a co-presenter with the Voice of the Obies. In 2021, several years after the Voice ceased publication of its print edition, the Wing took over as sole presenter.

Best of Deadline

The Independent
Victoria Beckham first slept with David ‘hours after meeting Prince Charles’
‘Thereafter, she said, Beckham was ‘a total animal’ in bed,’ the biography claims
Cosmopolitan
Katy Perry Went Topless in Nothing But Ripped Tights and an Open Jacket at PFW
Katy Perry went topless in nothing but ripped tights and an open jacket during Paris Fashion Week.
The Independent
Boy, 14, was held down and hacked to death at Wyoming mall while he tried to protect his girlfriend
Dominique Antonio Richard Harris and Jarreth Plunkett, both 15, are accused of murdering 14-year-old Bobby Maher during fatal attack
The Independent
‘I really don’t know what he said – and I don’t think he does either’: Trump pulls no punches as Biden struggles in debate
The first debate began with Biden spluttering and tripping over his own words, while Trump rambled
Associated Press
Indonesia detains 103 Taiwanese in a raid in Bali involving suspected cybercrime
Indonesian immigration authorities have detained 103 Taiwanese people after a raid at a villa on the resort island of Bali, officials said Friday. Godam said Indonesian authorities cannot charged them with conducting cybercrime.
AFP News
As ice melts, Everest's 'death zone' gives up its ghosts
On Everest's sacred slopes, climate change is thinning snow and ice, increasingly exposing the bodies of hundreds of mountaineers who died chasing their dream to summit the world's highest mountain.Sherpa said that bringing one body down from close to Lhotse's 8,516 metre peak -- the world's fourth-highest mountain -- had been among the hardest challenges so far.
The Telegraph
‘This wasn’t a debate, it was a medical emergency’: Our writers give their verdicts
Follow the latest reaction in our live blog
CNN
China expels two former defense ministers from Communist Party as military purge deepens
China on Thursday expelled its former Defense Minister Li Shangfu from the ruling Communist Party over corruption allegations, state broadcaster CCTV reported, eight months after he was dramatically removed from the post.
Associated Press Videos
Three bodies found inside crater at summit of Mount Fuji
Three bodies were found at the summit of Mount Fuji, Japan’s most famous mountain. One of the bodies had been brought down from the slopes but efforts to bring back the two other bodies were set to continue Friday or later, according to officials after a search was called off for Thursday because of forecasts for heavy rainfall.
The Telegraph
South Korea is running out of children – and this country could be next
Every spring, when warm rays of sunshine herald the start of South Korea’s baking summer, fountains across Seoul’s central Gwanghwamun plaza suddenly burst into life, sending cooling jets of water into the air.
Hello!
Elizabeth Hurley sets pulses racing in racy strapless bikini
Elizabeth Hurley never fails to impress with an unbelievable bikini photo and she didn't disappoint on Sunday when she donned a strapless number. See photo.
SETHLUI.COM
4 hours to heaven: 10 short trips to take from Singapore
The post 4 hours to heaven: 10 short trips to take from Singapore appeared first on SETHLUI.com.
South China Morning Post
Chinese teen in Alibaba maths finals sparks awe, controversy after beating MIT students
Alibaba Group Holding's annual global maths contest finished on Saturday with all eyes on a 17-year-old vocational school student who has bested hundreds of competitors from prestigious universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Tsinghua University, generating intense interest and speculation online. The Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, which has been hosted by Alibaba's Damo Academy annually for the past six years, except 2019, held the finals
The Telegraph
Gareth Southgate: ‘I am the problem’
Gareth Southgate has admitted being England’s major problem at the European Championship, plunging his future as manager in doubt beyond the tournament.
Associated Press Finance
China calls on scientists of all nations to study lunar samples, but notes obstacle with the US
China's space officials said Thursday they welcomed scientists from around the world to apply to study the lunar rock samples that the Chang'e 6 probe brought back to Earth in a historic mission, but noted there were limits to that cooperation, specifically with the United States. Officials said at a televised news conference in Beijing meant to introduce the mission's achievements that any cooperation with the U.S. would be hinged on removing an American law that bans direct bilateral cooperation with NASA. "The source of the obstacle in US-China aerospace cooperation is still in the Wolf Amendment,” said Bian Zhigang, vice chair of the China National Space Administration.
SETHLUI.COM
Owners of private diner with 2 years waitlist open curry mee stall at Havelock Food Centre
The post Owners of private diner with 2 years waitlist open curry mee stall at Havelock Food Centre appeared first on SETHLUI.com.
Evening Standard
Georgia 2-0 Portugal: Famous win sends Georgians into Euro 2024 last-16 as England get Slovakia
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Georges Mikautadze score on historic day in Gelsenkirchen
Hello!
Rita Ora has coined it an itsy bitsy bikini summer once again
Rita Ora just made a case for heatwave dressing in a skimpy bikini. See photos
Cosmopolitan
Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce Reveal Royal "Warning" They Got Before Meeting Prince William
Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce revealed the royal protocol they got before meeting Prince William at the Eras Tour.
INSIDER
North Korean troops will become 'cannon fodder' if they aid Russia in Ukraine, Pentagon says
A Pentagon spokesperson said that any military personnel North Korea sent to Ukraine to aid Russian forces would just be "cannon fodder."

Latest stories