The Outer Critics Circle Awards OCC and You Are There: Part 1

The Outer Critics Circle Awards celebrated the best of the 2025–2026 Broadway and Off-Broadway season yesterday afternoon at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, bringing together nominees, winners, critics, performers, directors, producers, and theater insiders for one of awards season’s most elegant and surprisingly intimate gatherings. Unlike the larger televised spectacles still looming ahead, the Outer Critics Circle Awards retain something distinctly New York theater: less manufactured glamour, more genuine artistic community.

Mark William and Richard Ridge

Rose Ciola owner of Manhattan Movement & Arts Center

The room reflected the extraordinary breadth of this season itself — grand revivals, daring downtown experimentation, lavish musical spectacle, deeply personal storytelling, and productions unafraid to challenge what modern theater can look and sound like. Winners and presenters moved through the afternoon with equal parts exhaustion and exhilaration after one of the most creatively ambitious seasons in recent memory. See red carpet photographs and acceptance speeches from  the celebration as Broadway and Off-Broadway continue racing toward the final crescendo of awards season.

Hannah Solow from Oh Mary!,

Outstanding Choreography Christopher Gattelli

Cinco Paul

Christine Schwarzman, Jamie deRoy, Megan O’Keefe and Micah Frank Producers Schmigadoon! 

In the first video President David Gordan and Vice President Richard Ridge introduce Hannah Solow from Oh Mary!, Joshua Henry Outstanding Lead Performer in a Broadway Musical for Ragtime, Christopher Gattelli Outstanding Choreography and Cinco Paul for Outstanding New Broadway Musical and Outstanding Book of a Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway all from Schmigadoon! 

Lear deBessonet Outstanding Direction of a Musical Ragtime

Nicole Kastrinos m Lear deBessonet

In this video Outstanding Featured Performer in an Off-Broadway Musical Judy Kuhn for The Baker’s Wife and Outstanding Direction of a Musical to Lear deBessonet for Ragtime.

59 Studio

Ro Reddick

The next presenter was Alex Newell who gave the award to Outstanding Video/Projection Design to 59 Studio, Ragtime, John Gassner Award (for a new American play preferably by a new playwright) to Ro Reddick for Cold War Choir Practice and Bubba Weiler, Well, I’ll Let You Go by Bubba Weiler.

Alex also gave the awards to Quincy Tyler Bernstine for Outstanding Lead Performer in an Off-Broadway Play Well, I’ll Let You Go who could not be there as she had a Thursday matinee day but sent a representative. Also receiving awards were Outstanding Revival of a Musical Ragtime.

Nygel D. Robinson Mexodus

Zhailon Levingston gave the award to Joe Mantello, for Outstanding Direction of a Musical for Death of a Salesman, Outstanding Lead Performer in an Off-Broadway Musical to Nygel D. Robinson, for Mexodus and Outstanding Orchestrations (Broadway or Off-Broadway) to Doug Besterman and Mike Morris, for Schmigadoon!