The Drama League Awards, created in 1935, honor distinguished productions and performances both on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 and Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

, in addition to recognizing exemplary career achievements in theatre, musical theatre, and directing. Each May, the awards are presented at the Annual Awards Luncheon with performers, directors, producers, and Drama League Members in attendance.

Katharine Cornell

Katharine Cornell

Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York.Cornell is known as the greatest American stage actress of the 20th century...

 was the recipient of the first award in 1935, for Distinguished Performance.

The awards ceremony for the 2010-11 season was held on May 20, 2011 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel (New York City).

Categories of awards

• Distinguished Production of a Play
• Distinguished Production of a Musical
• Distinguished Revival of a Play
• Distinguished Revival of a Musical
• Distinguished Performance

Additionally, an award may be given in the following categories:

• Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre
• Unique Contribution to the Theatre
• The Julia Hansen Award for Excellence in Directing

List of winners

Winners 2010-2011

• War Horse
  War Horse (play)
  War Horse is a play based on the book of the same name by acclaimed children's writer Michael Morpurgo, adapted for stage by Nick Stafford. Originally Morpurgo thought "they must be mad" to try to make a play from his best-selling 1982 novel. He was proved wrong by the play's instant success...
  
  - Distinguished Production of a Play
• The Book of Mormon - Distinguished Production of a Musical
• The Normal Heart
  The Normal Heart
  The Normal Heart is a largely autobiographical play by Larry Kramer. It focuses on the rise of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City between 1981 and 1984, as seen through the eyes of writer/activist Ned Weeks, the gay Jewish-American founder of a prominent HIV advocacy group...
  
  - Distinguished Revival of a Play
• Anything Goes
  Anything Goes
  Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...
  
  - Distinguished Revival of a Musical
• Mark Rylance
  Mark Rylance
  Mark Rylance is an English actor, theatre director and playwright.As an actor, Rylance found success on stage and screen. For his work in theatre he has won Olivier and Tony Awards among others, and a BAFTA TV Award...
  
   (Jerusalem and La Bête) - Distinguished Performance Award
• Whoopi Goldberg
  Whoopi Goldberg
  Whoopi Goldberg is an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won...
  
   - Unique Contribution to the Theatre Award
• Liza Minnelli
  Liza Minnelli
  Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
  
   - Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Award
• Susan Stroman
  Susan Stroman
  Susan Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, film director, and performer. She has won the Tony Award for both her choreography and direction, notably for the stage musical The Producers.-Early years:...
  
   - Julia Hansen Award for Excellence in Directing.

Winners 2009-2010

• Sondheim on Sondheim
  Sondheim on Sondheim
  Sondheim on Sondheim is a musical revue consisting of music and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim for his many shows. It is conceived and directed by James Lapine. The revue had a limited run on Broadway in 2010.-Background:...
  
  - Distinguished Production of a Musical
• Red
  Red (play)
  Red is a play by American writer John Logan about artist Mark Rothko first produced by the Donmar Warehouse, London in December 2009. The original production was directed by Michael Grandage and performed by Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his assistant Ken.The production, with its...
  
  - Distinguished Production of a Play
• La Cage aux Folles
  La Cage aux Folles
  La Cage aux Folles is a musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein and lyrics and music by Jerry Herman. Based on the 1973 French play of the same name by Jean Poiret, it focuses on a gay couple: Georges, the manager of a Saint-Tropez nightclub featuring drag entertainment, and Albin, his romantic...
  
  - Distinguished Revival of a Musical
• A View from the Bridge
  A View from the Bridge
  A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller that was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play was unsuccessful and Miller subsequently revised the play to contain two acts; this...
  
  - Distinguished Revival of a Play
• Alfred Molina
  Alfred Molina
  Alfred Molina is a British-born American actor. He first came to public attention in the UK for his supporting role in the 1987 film Prick Up Your Ears...
  
   - Distinguished Performance Award
• Nathan Lane
  Nathan Lane
  Nathan Lane is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to...
  
   - Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Award
• Kenny Leon
  Kenny Leon
  Kenny Leon is an African-American director notable for his work on Broadway and in regional theater. His success on Broadway has made him one of its foremost African-American directors....
  
   - Julia Hansen Award for Excellence in Directing
• Macy's Parade and Entertainment Group - Unique Contribution to the Theatre

Winners 2008-2009

• God of Carnage
  God of Carnage
  God of Carnage is a play by Yasmina Reza. It is about two pairs of parents, one of whose child has hurt the other at a public park, who meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childish, resulting in the evening devolving...
  
  , by Yasmina Reza
  Yasmina Reza
  Yasmina Reza is a French playwright, actress, novelist and screenwriter. Her parents were both of Jewish origin, her father Iranian, her mother Hungarian.-Career:...
  
   - Distinguished Production of a Play
• Billy Elliot The Musical
  Billy Elliot the Musical
  Billy Elliot the Musical is a musical based on the 2000 film Billy Elliot. The music is by Sir Elton John, and book and lyrics are by Lee Hall, who wrote the film's screenplay. The plot revolves around motherless Billy, who trades boxing gloves for ballet shoes...
  
  , Music by Elton John; Book and Lyrics by Lee Hall - Distinguished Production of a Musical
• Blithe Spirit
  Blithe Spirit (play)
  Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...
  
  , by Noel Coward - Distinguished Revival of a Play
• Hair
  Hair (musical)
  Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
  
  , Music by Galt MacDermot
  Galt MacDermot
  Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...
  
  ; Book, Lyrics by Gerome Ragni
  Gerome Ragni
  Gerome Bernard Ragni was an American actor, singer and songwriter, best known as the co-author of the groundbreaking 1960s Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.-Early life:...
  
  , James Rado - Distinguished Revival of a Musical
• Geoffrey Rush
  Geoffrey Rush
  Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting , three British Academy Film Awards , two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen...
  
   - Exit the King - Distinguished Performance Award
• Elton John
  Elton John
  Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
  
   - Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Award
• Arthur Laurents
  Arthur Laurents
  Arthur Laurents was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S...
  
   - Julia Hansen Award for Excellence in Directing
• Angela Lansbury
  Angela Lansbury
  Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
  
   - Unique Contribution to the Theatre
• Herb Blodgett - The 75th Anniversary Leadership Award

Winners 2007-2008

• August: Osage County
  August: Osage County
  August: Osage County is a darkly comedic play by Tracy Letts. It was the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago on 28 June 2007, and closed on 26 August 2007. Its Broadway debut was at the Imperial Theater on 4 December 2007 and...
  
  by Tracy Letts - Distinguished Production of a Play
• A Catered Affair
  A Catered Affair
  A Catered Affair is a musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by John Bucchino. It is based on both the 1956 film The Catered Affair written by Gore Vidal and the original 1955 teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky, set in 1953 in the Bronx...
  
  , Book by Harvey Fierstein; Music and Lyrics by John Bucchino - Distinguished Production of a Musical
• Macbeth
  Macbeth
  The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
  
  by William Shakespeare - Distinguished Revival of a Play
• South Pacific
  South Pacific (musical)
  South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...
  
  , Book by Joshua Logan and Oscar Hammerstein II, Music by Richard Rodgers; Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II - Distinguished Revival of a Musical
• Patti LuPone
  Patti LuPone
  Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
  
  , Gypsy - Distinguished Performance Award
• Paul Gemignani
  Paul Gemignani
  Paul Gemignani is an award-winning American musical director with a career on Broadway and West End theatre spanning over thirty years.-Life and career:...
  
   - Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Award
• Bartlett Sher
  Bartlett Sher
  Bartlett Sher , is an American theatre director. He received both the 2008 Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for his direction of the Broadway revival of South Pacific. The New York Times has described him as "one of the most original and exciting directors, not only in the American theater but...
  
   - Julia Hansen Award for Excellence in Directing
• Ellen Stewart
  Ellen Stewart
  Ellen Stewart was an American theater director and producer and the founder of La MaMa, E.T.C. . In the 1950s she worked as a fashion designer for Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Lord & Taylor, and Henri Bendel.-Biography:Ellen Stewart was either born in Alexandria, Louisiana or Chicago,...
  
   - Unique Contribution to the Theatre

Winners 2006-2007

• The Coast of Utopia
  The Coast of Utopia
  The Coast of Utopia is a 2002 trilogy of plays: Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage, written by Tom Stoppard with focus on the philosophical debates in pre-revolution Russia between 1833 and 1866...
  
  - Distinguished Production of a Play
• Spring Awakening
  Spring Awakening
  Spring Awakening is a rock musical adaptation of the controversial 1892 German play of the same title by Frank Wedekind. It features music by Duncan Sheik and a book and lyrics by Steven Sater. Set in late-19th century Germany, it concerns teenagers who are discovering the inner and outer tumult of...
  
  - Distinguished Production of a Musical
• Journey's End
  Journey's End
  Journey's End is a 1928 drama, the seventh of English playwright R. C. Sherriff. It was first performed at the Apollo Theatre in London by the Incorporated Stage Society on 9 December 1928, starring a young Laurence Olivier, and soon moved to other West End theatres for a two-year run...
  
  - Distinguished Revival of a Play
• Company
  Company (musical)
  Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....
  
  - Distinguished Revival of a Musical
• Liev Schreiber
  Liev Schreiber
  Isaac Liev Schreiber , commonly known as Liev Schreiber, is an American actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. He became known during the late 1990s and early 2000s, having initially appeared in several independent films, and later mainstream Hollywood films, including the Scream trilogy of...
  
   - Distinguished Performance
• John Kander
  John Kander
  John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
  
   and Fred Ebb
  Fred Ebb
  Fred Ebb was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera....
  
   - Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre
• Michael Mayer
  Michael Mayer (director)
  Michael Mayer is an American stage and film director. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 2007 for directing Spring Awakening.-Biography:...
  
   - Julia Hansen Award for Excellence in Directing
• Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids - Unique Contribution to the Theatre

Winners 2005-2006

• The History Boys
  The History Boys
  The History Boys is a play by British playwright Alan Bennett. The play premiered at the Lyttelton Theatre in London on 18 May 2004. Its Broadway debut was on 23 April 2006 at the Broadhurst Theatre where there were 185 performances staged before it closed on 1 October 2006.The play won multiple...
  
  - Distinguished Production of a Play
• Jersey Boys
  Jersey Boys
  Jersey Boys is a jukebox musical with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crewe and book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. It is a documentary-style musical, based on one of the most successful 1960s rock 'n roll groups, the Four Seasons...
  
  - Distinguished Production of a Musical
• Awake and Sing!
  Awake and Sing!
  Awake and Sing! is a drama written by American playwright Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced by The Group Theatre in 1935.-Summary and characters:...
  
  - Distinguished Revival of a Play
• Sweeney Todd
  Sweeney Todd (musical)
  Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1979 musical thriller with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and libretto by Hugh Wheeler. The musical is based on the 1973 play Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Christopher Bond....
  
  - Distinguished Revival of a Musical
• Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole is an American actress and singer.-Early life:Ebersole was born in Winnetka, Illinois, where she attended New Trier High School...
  
   - Distinguished Performance
• Patti LuPone
  Patti LuPone
  Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
  
   - Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre
• Marian Seldes
  Marian Seldes
  Marian Hall Seldes is an American stage, film, radio, and television actress whose career has spanned six decades and who was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.-Life and career:...
  
   - Unique Contribution to the Theatre
• Des McAnuff
  Des McAnuff
  Desmond McAnuff is the Canadian-American artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and director of musical theatre of such Broadway productions as Big River, The Who's Tommy and Jersey Boys.-Biography:...
  
  - Julia Hansen Award for Excellence in Directing

Winners 2004-2005

• Doubt
  Doubt (play)
  Doubt: A Parable is a 2004 play by John Patrick Shanley. Originally staged off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club on November 23, 2004, the production transferred to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway in March 2005 and closed on July 2, 2006 after 525 performances and 25 previews...
  
   - Distinguished Production of a Play
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
  Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (musical)
  Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a Broadway musical, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Jeffrey Lane; it is based on the film of the same name...
  
   - Distinguished Production of a Musical
• Twelve Angry Men - Distinguished Revival of a Play
• La Cage aux Folles - Distinguished Revival of a Musical
• Norbert Leo Butz
  Norbert Leo Butz
  Norbert Leo Butz is an American actor best known for his work in Broadway theatre.-Personal life:Butz was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Elaine and Norbert Butz...
  
   - Distinguished Performance
• BMI Musical Theatre Workshop - Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre
• The Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library
  New York Public Library
  The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
  
   at Lincoln Center - Unique Contribution to the Theatre
• Mike Nichols
  Mike Nichols
  Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
  
  - Julia Hansen Award for Excellence in Directing

For the list of winners, 1997 through 2007, see infoplease.com.