59th Annual Henry Hewes Design Awards lunch held October 23, 2023

59th Annual Henry Hewes Design Awards lunch held October 23, 2023

The 59th Henry Hewes Design Award Honors were announced September 19, 2023 and celebrated at a luncheon held at the Palm restaurant on West 50th Street in Manhattan, the first in-person awards ceremony since fall 2019. The warm and welcoming awards ceremony, was hosted by committee chair and ATCA member Jeffrey Eric Jenkins.

The 2023 Awards recognize artistry on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway stages for the 2022–2023 season, Scenic design awarded to team dots, a collaboration of Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, Andrew Moerdyk, and Kimie Nishikawa for Public Obscenities, Soho Rep/National Asian American Theatre Company (presented by David Zinn), costume design award to Brenda Abbandandolo for The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Broadway (presented by Susan Hilferty), lighting design award to Barbara Samuels for Public Obscenities, Soho Rep/National Asian American Theatre Company (presented by Natasha Katz), sound design award to Tei Blow for Public Obscenities, Soho Rep/National Asian American Theatre Company (presented by John Gromada), media designer Kameron Neal for Dark Disabled Stories, Public Theater (presented by Jeffrey Eric Jenkins), and puppetry design award to James Ortiz for Into the Woods.

The Ming Cho Lee Lifetime Achievement honoree celebrated in the ceremony was sound design pioneer Abe Jacob, awarded with extended comments by 2022 Ming Cho Lee honoree Jules Fisher .

“We are delighted that the Henry Hewes Design Awards will once again bring the entire design community together in-person for the first time since 2019,” noted committee chair Jenkins. “We continue to recognize the outstanding contribution that designers make to the creative process in all theater productions and we congratulate the 2023 Honorees for their excellent work.”

The Henry Hewes Design Awards Committee includes theater critics Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, chair; David Barbour; David Cote; Naveen Kumar; Britanni Samuel, Helen Shaw; and Martha Wade Steketee. The awards are sponsored by the Henry Hewes Foundation for the Theater Arts.

Additional coverage:

September 22, 2023 American Theatre

– Submitted by Martha Wade Steketee