Theater News

Rachel Bay Jones and Steven Pasquale to Announce Lortel Award Nominations

The Lortel Awards will be hosted by Laura Benanti and Jason Jones.

Rachel Bay Jones and Steven Pasquale will announce the Lucille Lortel Award nominations.
Rachel Bay Jones and Steven Pasquale will announce the Lucille Lortel Award nominations.
(© David Gordon)

Broadway vets Rachel Bay Jones (Dear Evan Hansen) and Steven Pasquale (Junk) will announce the 2018 Lucille Lortel Award nominations on Wednesday, April 4. Jones received the 2017 Lortel Award for Dear Evan Hansen, with Pasquale taking home a Lortel in 2016 for The Robber Bridegroom.

The Lucille Lortel Awards recognize outstanding achievement off-Broadway. Representatives of the Off-Broadway League, Actors' Equity Association, Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, and the Lucille Lortel Foundation serve on the voting committee, as do other off-Broadway professionals, theater journalists, and academics.

Set to host the ceremony are The Detour costars Laura Benanti and Jason Jones. It will take place Sunday, May 6, at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

This year, the Lortels will honor In the Body of the World writer-performer Eve Ensler with the Lifetime Achievement Award; Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson composer Michael Friedman, who will have his name added posthumously to the famed Playwrights' Sidewalk in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre; and WP Theater, which will receive the Outstanding Body of Work award.