Lucille Lortel Awards Adopt Gender-Neutral Acting Categories for 2022 – The Hollywood Reporter

Off-Broadway’s huge awards present is formally eradicating gender distinctions from its performing classes.

The Lucille Lortel Awards introduced on Thursday that going ahead, the annual ceremony honoring excellent achievement off-Broadway, will now not characteristic greatest actor or greatest actress honors. As an alternative, it’ll acknowledge every season’s greatest performers.

The 4 classes changing the main and supporting actor and actress awards will probably be excellent lead performer in a musical, excellent supporting performer in a musical, excellent lead performer in a play and excellent supporting performer in a play.

Moreover, the awards occasion — which is yearly produced by the Off-Broadway League and the Lucille Lortel Theatre — will now honor the work of whole present casts with its newly created excellent ensemble class, set to debut in the course of the 2022 ceremony.

“Off-Broadway has all the time sought to be a shining instance of range and inclusivity,” Casey York, president of the Off-Broadway League, mentioned in a press release. “Because the world round us — and particularly in New York Metropolis’s theatre scene — continues to evolve, it’s necessary for Off-Broadway to prepared the ground in acknowledging and celebrating inventive excellence in a extra inclusive manner. We need to actually acknowledge the numerous proficient performers in our group.”

“We’re devoted to seeing and acknowledging all of the members of our Off-Broadway household as we proceed to be taught and develop and look in direction of the way forward for the Lucille Lortel Awards,” George Forbes, govt director of the Lucille Lortel Theatre, adopted up in his personal assertion.

The brand new classes will go into impact in the course of the upcoming thirty seventh annual awards present, which is slated to happen on Might 1, 2022. Nominations will probably be introduced in early April.

The transfer follows the Gotham Awards’ choice, introduced in August, to pivot away from gendered performing honors and as a substitute award performances by gender-neutral classes. Different award reveals which have adopted non-gendered awarding classes embody the MTV Film and TV Awards in 2017 and the Grammys in 2012.

Gendered efficiency classes stay for Broadway’s largest awards present, the Tonys, in addition to movie and TV’s largest honors: the Golden Globes, Emmys and Oscars.