The Lortels Were Loud, Proud, and Absolutely Alive

I was in the room on Sunday night. And I want to tell you about it properly, because the 41st Annual Lucille Lortel Awards, held at NYU Skirball on May 3rd, 2026, was not just a ceremony. It was a demonstration. A proof of concept. An argument, made in real time, for exactly why this art form matters so much right now.

The "Lortels," or "the Lorts" as host Alex Moffat insisted everyone already calls them (is he right?), brought together the best of Off-Broadway's 2025-26 season for a night that was funny, irreverent, emotionally gutting, politically charged, and ultimately, genuinely uplifting. Not the hollow, put-a-bow-on-it kind of uplifting you get when an evening is being managed into pleasantness. The real kind, where people standing at a podium say true things and the room actually feels it.

If you care about Off-Broadway, you should know what happened here. So let's get into it.

Alex Moffat Walks In (Slightly Off-Key and Completely On-Brand)

The evening's host, SNL alumnus and Bigfoot! The Musical cast member Alex Moffat, set the tone immediately by being a fantastic sport about the fact that his show was nominated for the very awards he was hosting. He noted, with characteristic self-awareness, that he had written his hosting speech before the nominations were announced and had already assumed he'd be nominated for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. "I wrote this before the nominations came out. I sort of assumed I would be. That's weird. We'll change this in post."

Moffat's whole mode for the evening was this: charming deflation. He clearly loves theater, clearly loves Off-Broadway specifically, and kept puncturing the formality of the occasion in the best possible way. He had a bit early on where he tried to reprise his Bigfoot number as an Off-Broadway ode, improvising new lyrics on the fly, enlisting the band and some backup singers, and collapsing happily into the chaos of it. It was the kind of swing that works because the room trusted him.

His big thematic joke, threaded through the night, was the AI question. Standing at the podium early in the evening, he said: "I'm here to tell you this live theater thing. It's the one thing that AI cannot replace." He paused. "Truth be told, I am an AI hologram. The real Alex Moffat is just sitting at home, enjoying his paycheck for this event, which is a thirty-dollar Uber Eats gift card." The room ate it up. But underneath the joke was something the whole evening kept returning to, sincerely: the irreplaceable, unreplicable, deeply human nature of live performance.

He put it beautifully when he talked about why he keeps doing theater: "Something truly magical takes place during a live show when there's a couple hundred people crammed into a theater, anywhere from 76 to 499 seats. Experiencing something together... and we can just play them like a violin." It was self-deprecating and true at the same time.

Mexodus Sweeps the Night

If there was a single story that defined the evening's competitive awards, it was Mexodus. The two-man Audible Theater musical, created and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, arrived at NYU Skirball as the most nominated show of the season with nine nods, and it left with four wins: Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Director (David Mendizábal), Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical (Robinson), and Outstanding Sound Design (Mikhail Fiksel).

For those who haven't caught it at the Daryl Roth Theatre, where it runs through June 14th, Mexodus tells a chapter of American history that most of us were never taught: the story of thousands of enslaved people who escaped not north to freedom, but south to Mexico, which had abolished slavery decades before the Civil War. Quijada and Robinson built it as a two-person musical that's been described, fairly, as the next Hamilton, and the nominations and wins validate that the comparison has teeth.

Robinson's acceptance speech was one of the most alive and unguarded of the night. He didn't prepare for this, he told us, still processing, visibly overwhelmed. He talked about writing the show during the pandemic, getting a call from Quijada about this idea that "sounded fucking crazy," and saying yes anyway. And then he said this, which I keep turning over: "Theater can be a piece of shit. Theater people can be awful people. If you feel awful, I'm not sorry for saying that you're awful. But we can band together and change this thing. Talk to your stage managers. Talk to the people who made this thing work every day. Be not an asshole."

The crowd loved him for it. Not because it was a performance, but because it wasn't.

Quijada, speaking near the end of the night when Mexodus was named Outstanding Musical, offered the evening's most quotable distillation of what the show is trying to do: "There is universality in specificity. If you look at us and you only see these two struggles, I need you to challenge your minds. We are the same thing. No one is free till everyone is free."

The Moment That Stopped the Room: Qween Jean

I'll be honest with you. When Saturday Church costume designer Qween Jean won Outstanding Costume Design, the speech that followed was the most galvanizing moment of the evening. Full stop.

Qween Jean, accepting a Lortel for their work on a show about a young Black queer teenager who finds community in the underground ballroom scene, did not come to the stage to say thank you and sit down. They came with something to say.

After expressing deep gratitude to New York City Workshop, director Whitney White, and the cast and crew of Saturday Church, Jean pivoted to something larger. "I want to say that what is so powerful about this moment, yes, the recognition is powerful, but we need equity. We need real equity. Transgender people are not the enemy. We do not have to be trans to love a trans person."

The room was already with them. They kept going. "The times, the attack on this community, is harrowing. It is unacceptable, and the silence will not be tolerated. Not worrying about somebody else's human rights is the sure way that they will take yours away."

And then they told us something personal. Two blocks from where we were sitting, not long ago, Qween Jean had been protesting for their community and was assaulted by the NYPD, their arm broken. "And so to be here," they said, "it is just perfect."

The room stood. Jean's closing words were a challenge and an invitation at once: "When you love somebody, when you see different people, it doesn't mean that they're harmful. It means that they have a different life to carry. So can you be courageous and help them carry their light?"

I'll carry that one with me for a while.

Cha See and the Power of Making the Unseen Seen

The other moment that hit me personally was Cha See's win for Outstanding Lighting Design for The Unknown, in which Sean Hayes made his Lortel-nominated debut. Cha See was so genuinely surprised that they said flat out: "I didn't expect this. I was just here for the vibes."

That genuine, unspun shock made the win land differently, and it's worth pausing on what lighting design does and why it matters. Lighting is the art of making the audience feel something they can't quite name. It is the emotional architecture of the room. Cha See's work on The Unknown evidently did that at a level that moved a whole voting committee, and in a year where visibility was a running theme of the evening, the lighting designer getting their flowers felt thematically right. They bring visibility to everything else. It was good to see them step into some themselves.

Both Cha See and Qween Jean represented exactly what the Lortels do best: surface excellence that doesn't always get the spotlight on Broadway's bigger stage. These are artists doing essential, often invisible work, and the ceremony gave them a room full of peers to witness it.

William Finn Comes Home

The evening's most emotionally complex sequence was the tribute to William Finn, who passed away and is being posthumously inducted onto the Playwrights' Sidewalk in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village.

Finn, the composer and lyricist behind Falsettos, March of the Falsettos, A New Brain, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and so many more, built his entire body of work Off-Broadway. Every New York run of every show he ever made happened in these rooms, among these people. The induction felt earned and overdue simultaneously.

The tribute itself featured four performers deeply enmeshed in Finn's legacy: Carolee Carmello, Lilli Cooper, Mary Testa, and Chip Zien, who gave us a medley that traveled through Falsetto Land, March of the Falsettos, and beyond. Songs that have meant so much to so many for decades, sung by people who've lived inside them. There were tears in the room, and not just from the older crowd who were there for the original runs.

Producer David Stone, who worked closely with Finn, spoke about how Finn's influence reached far beyond his own shows: "Next to Normal. Fun Home. Dear Evan Hansen. And all this goes on. His legacy is truly profound." He added that Gavin Creel has a tattoo that simply says "both," a reference to Finn's worldview, the idea that everything is "wonderful and terrible, simple and complicated, light and dark, both."

James Lapine, who directed March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland among others, brought something warmer and more personal. He recalled the first production he and Finn did together in "a little 90-seat theater upstairs in the far reaches of 42nd Street, a former porn house where the floor was still sticky." He said: "I know everything David said. I second it. And I wish Bill were here, because if he were speaking, you'd have a much better time."

On a night when the best revival award went to the 20th-anniversary production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, now running at New World Stages, Finn's presence was woven through the entire ceremony in ways both planned and incidental. It felt right.

The Other Winners Worth Knowing

Prince Faggot, Jordan Tannahill's play produced by Playwrights Horizons and Soho Rep, took home Outstanding Play. The show ran in 2025, and accepting on Tannahill's behalf (he was with his family), Naomi said: "I want to encourage every writer, producer, director, actor, friend, dramaturg, whoever you are: think beyond the horizons and think outside of your lived experience. Let's all try to do that."

Aigner Mizzelle won Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play for THE MONSTERS at Manhattan Theatre Club, in a speech that arrived at something genuinely moving. She described wondering whether taking it one step at a time was sufficient, whether she was behind some mythical standard of where she should be. The Lortel win, she said, had "cemented for me that focusing all your passion and energy and love into the step right in front of you is enough."

David Turner won Outstanding Featured Performer in a Play for Mother Russia at Signature Theatre, taking a moment to acknowledge his husband in the audience, "the blonde bombshell in the orchestra," and expressing a wish for everyone in the room to get to work with his director, Teddy Bergman, describing him as an "actor's dream."

Nick Rashad Burroughs took Outstanding Featured Performer in a Musical for GODDESS, and his speech was one of the most direct statements of the evening's recurring theme: "Representation matters in every way, shape, and form. The only reason I'm here is because I saw someone who looked like me simply pursuing their dreams. You never know how much you're impacting someone by simply showing up as your best self."

The ensemble of Night Side Songs, Robin de Jesús, Brooke Ishibashi, Jonathan Raviv, Kris Saint-Louis, and Mary Testa, took Outstanding Ensemble. Edgar Godineaux and Jared Grimes won Outstanding Choreographer for Lights Out: Nat "King" Cole, with Godineaux offering a beautiful list of the artists whose shoulders he stands on, from Sammy Davis Jr. and the Nicholas Brothers to Ben Vereen to Michael Peters. Director David Mendizábal's speech for Mexodus was among the most emotionally resonant of the night, closing with: "What are you choosing to do with the days that your ancestors earned you? I think they'd be fucking proud."

Mona Pirnot's I'm Assuming You Know David Greenspan, performed by David Greenspan at the Atlantic Theater Company, took Outstanding Solo Show. The win for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee as Outstanding Revival felt like a full-circle moment on a night already defined by Finn's legacy.

Honoring Mia Katigbak

The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Mia Katigbak, performer and co-founder of the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), presented by Tony winner Francis Jue. The tribute to Katigbak was both personal and structural, tracing not just her career but her argument: that Asian American artists are "as capable as anyone else to tell universal human stories," that faces like theirs can represent the universal.

Katigbak herself spoke with the authority of someone who has been making this case for decades and is still making it, still angry it needs to be made, still committed to the work. She noted the connection directly: it is an assertion that "faces like ours can represent the universal, redefining what a western classic is."

Her closing statement was the clearest declaration of the evening's stakes: "Until my last gasp, I will keep hoping for and working towards an American Theater that keeps that ideal alive."

A New Award, a Long Legacy

The Off-Broadway League used the occasion to introduce a new honor, the Paul Libin Leadership Award, named for the late Paul Libin, a founding father of Off-Broadway who ran the Off-Broadway League as president for over thirty years and whose fingerprints are on virtually every institutional structure the community operates within today.

The inaugural recipient of the award was George Forbes, executive director of the Lucille Lortel Theatre and Foundation, who has served the Off-Broadway community for over 35 years. Forbes accepted with characteristic self-deprecation, describing what it meant to arrive in New York at 23, be overwhelmed and easily intimidated, and be welcomed anyway. "The people I worked with were the most generous I've ever met," he said. "And I hope that I've paid that forward."

An In Memoriam That Earned Its Silence

Before the final awards, the ceremony paused for an In Memoriam segment, with Isa Briones, currently starring in Just In Time, performing Bobby Darin's "The Curtain Falls." It's a song built for exactly this moment, and Briones delivered it with the kind of quiet devastation that comes from someone who understands what it means to sing in front of people, in a room, together, with no safety net. The silence after was real.

The Full Winners List

Outstanding Play: Prince Faggot, Jordan Tannahill (Playwrights Horizons / Soho Rep)

Outstanding Musical: Mexodus, Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson (Audible Theater)

Outstanding Revival: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (New World Stages)

Outstanding Solo Show: I'm Assuming You Know David Greenspan, Mona Pirnot (Atlantic Theater Company)

Outstanding Director: David Mendizábal, Mexodus

Outstanding Choreographer: Edgar Godineaux and Jared Grimes, Lights Out: Nat "King" Cole

Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play: Aigner Mizzelle, THE MONSTERS

Outstanding Featured Performer in a Play: David Turner, Mother Russia

Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical: Nygel D. Robinson, Mexodus

Outstanding Featured Performer in a Musical: Nick Rashad Burroughs, GODDESS

Outstanding Ensemble: Night Side Songs, Robin de Jesús, Brooke Ishibashi, Jonathan Raviv, Kris Saint-Louis, and Mary Testa

Outstanding Scenic Design: Miriam Buether, Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.

Outstanding Costume Design: Qween Jean, Saturday Church

Outstanding Lighting Design: Cha See, The Unknown

Outstanding Sound Design: Mikhail Fiksel, Mexodus

Outstanding Projection Design: John Narun, Bughouse

Special Awards:

Lifetime Achievement: Mia Katigbak

Playwrights' Sidewalk Inductee: William Finn (posthumous)

Inaugural Paul Libin Leadership Award: George Forbes

Why This Night Mattered

Look, I go to a lot of theater. I cover a lot of shows. It is easy, sometimes, to walk out of an awards show feeling like you've attended a ritual with no substance, a performance of community rather than the real thing.

This wasn't that.

The 41st Annual Lucille Lortel Awards felt, from the room, like a community that knows what it is and what it's for, and that is operating with real urgency right now. The artists who spoke, from Qween Jean to Nygel Robinson to Mia Katigbak to Brian Quijada, were not simply thanking their families and their agents. They were making arguments. About whose stories get told, about who gets to tell them, about what the theater owes to its audiences and its artists. About what it means to keep making work when the world outside is loud and hostile and trying to take things from people.

TDF's executive director put it plainly in her remarks: "Champion for the audience. For too long, audiences have been seen as a byproduct of the artistic process." That line stuck with me. So did everything Qween Jean said. So did Robinson telling the room to stop being awful to each other and start talking to their stage managers.

And Alex Moffat, for all his comedic deflation, said the truest thing of the night right at the start: live theater is the one thing AI cannot replace. Not because of some mystical property of performance, but because of what happens when a couple hundred people are crammed into the same room, experiencing the same thing, together, right now, unrepeatable. That's not a feature. That's the whole point.

I'm glad I was there.

All awards cover the 2025-26 Off-Broadway season. Mexodus continues its run at the Daryl Roth Theatre through June 14, 2026. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is currently running at New World Stages.