2025-2026 Roger Rees Awards Set For May at Symphony Space

The Broadway Education Alliance has announced that the 16th Annual Roger Rees Awards for Excellence in Student Performance will take place on Sunday, May 17, 2026, at Symphony Space, located at 2537 Broadway at West 95th Street in New York City. The event will begin at 7:00 p.m.

Produced by BEA and Disney Theatrical Group, The Roger Rees Awards features the Outstanding Performer Award that recognizes two students who have performed a leading role in an officially licensed high school musical production. Two students selected by a panel of leading Broadway professionals will represent the Greater New York region at The Broadway League Foundation's Jimmy Awards (The National High School Musical Theatre Awards) on June 22, 2026, at the Minskoff Theatre.

A total of 103 high schools from across the Greater New York area will participate in the 2025–2026 Roger Rees Awards program. For a complete list of participating schools, visit https://rogerreesawards.com/schools/

The Roger Rees Awards portfolio of student recognitions is supported by leading industry organizations, including New York City Center Education & Community Engagement Department (Student Orchestra and Design Awards); Broadway Inbound and Theatrical Rights Worldwide (Outstanding Educator Award); BroadwayWorld (Student Journalism Award); Goren Family Foundation (Choral Ensemble Award); Playbill Inc. (Marketing and Program Publishing Awards); and the Stage Managers Association (Stage Management Award). Additionally, members of the Casting Society of America adjudicate students participating in New Faces, which recognizes solo performance across multiple disciplines beyond musical theater.

To be eligible for the Roger Rees Awards, a high school must present an officially licensed high school musical production and be located within the Greater New York region, which includes 14 New York counties: Bronx, Dutchess, Kings (Brooklyn), Nassau, New York (Manhattan), Orange, Putnam, Queens, Richmond (Staten Island), Rockland, Suffolk, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester.

The Roger Rees Awards are presented with the generous support of many other Broadway industry professionals and leading organizations, including Nancy Nagel Gibbs, Rick Elice, Anant Das, BroadwayHD, Broadway Plus, Music Theatre International, Withum, and many others.

Notable past Roger Rees Awards winners who won national honors at The Jimmy Awards include 2023 Best Actress winner Lauren Marchand; 2021 Best Actor finalist Mateo Lizcano; 2019 Best Actress winner Ekele Ukegbu, and scholarship recipient Jeremy Fuentes; 2018 Best Actor winner Andrew Barth Feldman; and 2015 Best Actress winner Marla Louissaint.

Beyond recognizing excellence in theater arts education, the program honors the life and legacy of Roger Rees, the beloved Broadway actor, director, and educator. Rees received Olivier and Tony Awards for The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby and earned Tony Award nominations for Indiscretions and as co-director of Peter and the Starcatcher. A passionate mentor to young artists, Rees believed deeply in nurturing the next generation of performers. Rick Elice—playwright, author of Finding Roger, and Rees' partner of more than 30 years—shared, “Rog would have liked this chance to educate and inspire young actors, to offer a guiding hand—as so many were offered to him when he too was a kid with a dream.” Roger Rees passed away in July 2015 following a year-long battle with brain cancer and was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in November 2015.