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Hangin' Backstage with the Winners of the 63rd Annual Drama Desk Awards!
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Nov 2, 2022
Winners for the 63rd Annual Drama Desk Awards were announced just last night at The Town Hall. In keeping with 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 in the same competitive categories.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. We're at the 63rd Annual Drama Desk Awards, and I caught up with many of this year's winners
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It all looks great. Congratulations. Here we are again. How do you feel? I feel over the moon. I just found out on the way up here that Spongebob won Best Musical
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And Best Director. And Best Director. And Best Wigs. And Best Wigs. Yes, and it's like, ah! It's great. And Gavin won
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And Gavin Lee. It feels really phenomenal to see people recognize that I know and love
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and that I know are pouring their hearts into it. And it feels pretty crazy and pretty special
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And I got to meet Jesse Mueller, who I'm a big fan of
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It's just, this is crazy. I feel very, very grateful for the honor that the Drama Desk has given me
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But it really all goes back to prior Walter and Tony Kushner
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and Tony writing this play and writing this character. I'm merely a bag of bones
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if it wasn't for this remarkable, profound character that Tony wrote that I get to inhabit
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So it really does all come back to that. And it is a life-changing experience
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I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it, but I think it does change you on a cellular level
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as an audience member, but also as a performer, if you're doing it every night for however many months
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it's going to change your insides. There's something so stunning about that
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Shock is the wrong word. It has been such a wonderful experience
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As I said tonight, it's as though I haven't been away for 40 years
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People have been so welcoming and warm and friendly and have remembered what I've done, which is amazing
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so that has been really a wonderful experience it's uh it's a dream come true i mean the role
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is just it's so plumb full of just goodness and joy and um and i i've just i've had the best time
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kind of creating her and that's so much in part like uh to my amazing uh cast i mean they're all
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We all put in together to make this piece kind of rise
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And Jesse and Alex and Joshua and Renee, they're the best. So it's easy to work
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When do you get material like this? It's just one of those things
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Somebody was saying, Nathan Stewart Jarrett was saying he was auditioning for some Netflix show
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And he was like reading the material and thinking, God, this isn't all that great
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After you've been doing Tony Kushner's writing, you know, he's a hard act to follow
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And so it's just that. It's that, you know, that's what inspires you
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It challenges you. and also just the wonderful camaraderie of this ensemble of actors who are you know just at the top of their game And it been you know we bonded You do a play like this and you tend to bond
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It's really, it's incredible. It's really exciting. I was coming for the experience and being nominated is truly incredible
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Been on the nomination list. I have history with nomination lists and winning
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is just a topping on a cake that I can eat. Honestly, I'm still in a state of shock
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My girlfriend just said to me, what exactly are you feeling? I was like, I don't know. I guess I'm numb
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That's how I feel. I never win anything. And I just thought, I'm never going to win anything
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And that's all good because I love my show and I'm happy. So this was a real treat
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I loved working at Lincoln Center. It's a wonderful institution. and it's like they said when they gave me the award
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The not-for-profit theaters in New York are the places where new work is happening and so they're one of the major homes
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for producing new plays and it was a wonderful experience. We had a great company
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I got to work with Daniel Aukin, who I adore. It was a great experience
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This is a piece that changed us at whatever point in our lives we met it
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at the Kerr originally, at the National originally, reading it, performing it in school
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any of the ways in which we've all found our way to these characters, to this world
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and we're open by it. And the fact that we get to be a part of that legacy
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and delivering it forward is why we're here. Yeah. I think when any producer or actor or designer
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is given the gift of working on this play, it's something you just step up to
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because it doesn't get better than Angels in America. What Tony has written and what he's done for theatre is astonishing
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So we are daily blessed to work on it and just so happy that people are enjoying it as much as they are
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I mean, I feel like I'm an unbelievably lucky guy. I got a great director and a great cast
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and two shots at working on the revival at the National and then here
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And I really feel I loved it in London. I love it even more here
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I think I got a chance to do some rewriting in Perestroika
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And I don't think there's any conceivable way that the play could have come back to New York and back to Broadway
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in a more luxe and intelligent and passionate production. So I just feel very, very, very grateful and lucky
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You know, any award you get means something to you. and what it means with the Drama Desk, because it combines Broadway and Off-Broadway, which
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was pointed out many times tonight It the whole community of the theater So to get this award for revival of a show that was written in 1956 based on a play that was written in 1912 from the theater community is a great great honor
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It's intimidating to get up there and have to speak with knowing that Tony Kushner's in the audience listening
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I'm like, I'm not so good with the words and you are. But you're not in the same category
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Yes. We're mostly in shock, I think. We're just so thrilled, but so excited, so happy to have this work recognized and for people to know we're here
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And we love this play. We love everyone in it. So we're just very moved that we were recognized
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Yeah, it's a thrill. And also, it's a payoff to the producers who really, you know, risked everything and felt passionately about this
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And I'm thrilled for myself and for them. I was fortunate enough to work in live television and in theater in Chicago
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And so in a lot of ways, it brings together my favorite things of learning from the audiences, right
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Of taking what the preview audiences are telling you or the out-of-town audiences are telling you and trying to make things better
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I love that stuff. I love the figuring out of the very practical puzzle of like, we need to get from point A to point B, but so-and-so can't change your costume
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I love it. Well, not only is Carousel one of the most beloved scores, and rightly so, the responsibility of this great score is a little scary
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And I was walking in the footsteps of a giant, the great Don Walker. Do you remember him, I hope
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I literally was shocked I was very very shocked to win because I'm a newbie
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I'm a newbie there's people there there's a man that just got up before me he's 50 years he's been in the music
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you know orchestrating I feel I felt a little bit bad as well
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I felt like you know Adrian Sutton who's my friend and he was nominated as well
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and just such a brilliant musician and you know composer and done so many plays before
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And yeah, I'm just very grateful and thankful for recognizing me to allowing me into this world
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It was really such an honor to work on this project. What was wonderful is the juxtaposition between all the different classes of people
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You have Cockneys, you have the servant class, you have the aristocratic class
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and kind of having them all merge together and help to tell the story
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was a wonderful design challenge. And with our wonderful director, Bart Shear
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steering us through and keeping things on track, it was an amazing, amazing experience
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I mean, Harry Potter has been an extraordinary challenge, an extraordinary moment in the career of developing new techniques
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actually new lights, new software, new hardware, things to match all the challenges that it's thrown at
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I was so happy for the show We had such an extraordinary experience It was so different unusual environmental and yeah just wonderful to be recognized for that kind of work
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I totally was surprised. With the competition, I did not think we would get it, so I was thrilled
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Just working with David Zinn and Tina Landau, and you know, the whole creative team, it's just been
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it's an unbelievable experience. There's such creative, creative minds and to be in that kind of presence
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just refueled me. I was actually going through a very rough time at that time
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So to be in that environment and to experience the joy and the excitement of it all
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was really just lifted me right up. And, you know, again, I work with my friends
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It's like the best thing in the world. I'm thrilled beyond belief
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The Drama Desk Awards is something, you know, that I feel has always been
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has always featured the depth of New York theatre talent and to be a part of that
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any small part of it is such a privilege and to be awarded the prize with this
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is just it floors me so it's awesome look at this smile yeah incredible
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I mean the thing is we are such Broadway fans both of us and come every year
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and see everything So it's like a sort of surreal and amazing
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Just having the show, having Darren's show play at the Atlantic, that was a thrill
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This is incredible, right? Unbelievable. We can't believe it. And literally, this does sound like I'm just saying it because it's you
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Honestly, I visit Broadway World about once every two weeks to see what's coming on, what's on
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So to be here, unreal. We're both, honestly, you've no idea what it means to us
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I thank the Drama Desk for, you know, honouring that. But it means a great deal for me because today's audience wants real experiences
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And puppetry, even though it's a synthetic thing, it's real light, real actors
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And it connects with today's audience more than it ever has. And I'm very honored
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You know, I think when Mark Brokaw was talking, it kind of brought me back to that time
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And it was just kind of overwhelming. I got a little bit of anxiety when I went on stage. but I'm just so moved and humbled and just I'm out of words you know it's it was an experience
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that it was I don't think I think it's an experience as an actor that I'll never forget
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oh it just means the kind of culmination cherry on top of everything we've worked so hard for
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and just to be appreciated and loved by this community that we appreciate and love it means
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everything you know I I to be honest I'm new to this and so I didn't even know that these things
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existed, like that I could win this. And so all I did was just like do what I wanted to do
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which is act. And I got an opportunity to do that back to back to back. And I was grateful for that
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And then on top of it, I got an award and then nominated for this other thing. And I'm just like
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ah, well, thank you. You know, the acting was enough, but the fact that I'm being recognized
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for it just feels really, really great
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