An all-star lineup of Broadway favorites are set to serve as guest presenters, coaches, and judges for this year's Jimmy Awards, which will be held at Broadway's Minskoff Theatre June 24. The annual event recognizes the best in high school musical theatre performers, with this year's ceremony hosted by Josh Groban.
Special guest presenters will include Victoria Clark, Justin Cooley, Andrew Barth Feldman, and Ayana Jackson.
The annual event recognizes the best in high school musical theatre performers, with nominees, who have already won a state-level competition from across the country, taking the stage to duke it out to win the titles of Best Performance by an Actor and Actress.
Presented by the Broadway League Foundation and named in honor of the late producer and theatre owner James M. Nederlander, the Jimmy Awards see nominees partaking in a week of events, workshops, and master classes with industry professionals. The week culminates in the ceremony itself.
The 12 coaches who have been mentoring the 102 high school student nominees throughout the course of the week include English Bernhardt, Janet Dacal, Colin Hanlon, MaryAnn Hu, Leonard Joseph, Adam Kantor, Telly Leung, Adam J. Levy, Desi Oakley, Eliseo Román, Steven Telsey, and EJ Zimmerman.
The panel of judges for the awards includes Montego Glover, Kenny Leon, Joe Machota, Marc
Platt, T. Oliver Reid, Tara Rubin, Nick Scandalios, Bernard Telsey, and Lia Vollack. Special guest judges include James Monroe Iglehart, Alan Menken, and Thomas Schumacher. Preliminary judges who evaluated and cast the nominees in various musical numbers for the ceremony included Gabriel Barre, Kristian Charbonier, Stephanie Klapper, Sammy
Lopez, Kevin Metzger-Timson, and Dale Mott.
The Jimmy Awards are notorious for helping young performers get discovered—stars like Reneé Rapp, Feldman, Jai’Len Josey, and Kyle Selig were all Jimmy winners before making their Broadway debut.
READ: 15 Jimmy Award Alums Who Are Now Theatre Favorites
Monday's ceremony is being directed by Van Kaplan and will feature music supervision by Geoffrey Ko, choreography by Kiesha Lalama, and group direction and choreography by Luis Salgado.
The awards will stream for free beginning at 7:30 PM via the Jimmy Awards official Facebook and YouTube channels. The stream will also be available on Playbill.
Visit JimmyAwards.com for more information.