Roster of Schools Announced For This Year's Roger Rees Awards

The Broadway Education Alliance has announced the 2020 roster of Greater New York City high schools participating in the 10th annual presentation of The Roger Rees Awards for Excellence in Student Performance, www.rogerreesawards.com. The fifty-three (53) high schools represent Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, as well as Long Island, Orange County, Rockland County, and Westchester County.

Full list of schools:

BROOKLYN

Xaverian High School

THE BRONX

Cardinal Spellman High School Horace Mann School Riverdale Country Day School

MANHATTAN

Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School Hunter College High School
Professional Performing Arts School

LONG ISLAND

Bay Shore Senior High School
Chaminade High School
Cold Spring Harbor Junior-Senior High School Farmingdale High School
Floral Park Memorial High School
General Douglas MacArthur High School
Great Neck North High School
Half Hollow Hills High School East
Hauppage High School
H Frank Carey High School
Holy Trinity Diocesan High School
Huntington High School
Jericho High School
Lawrence Woodmere Academy
Miller Place UFSD
North Babylon High School
Oceanside High School
Oyster Bay High School
Paul D. Schreiber High School
Pierson Middle-High School
Plainedge High School
Roslyn High School
South Side High School
Wantagh High School
Wellington C. Mepham High School
West Babylon Senior High School
William A. Shine Great Neck South High School

STATEN ISLAND

St. Joseph Hill Academy High School

QUEENS

Christ the King High School

ORANGE COUNTY

James I. O'Neill High School

ROCKLAND COUNTY

Clarkstown South High School
North Rockland High School
Nyack High School
Pearl River High School
Suffern High School

WESTCHESTER COUNTY

Alexander Hamiliton High School
Archbishop Stepinac High School
Blind Brook High School
North Salem Middle/High School
Pelham Memorial High School
Pleasantville High School
Rye Neck High School
Sleepy Hollow High School
Walter Panas High School
Westlake High School
White Plains High School

To be eligible to participate in the Roger Rees Awards, schools must present an officially licensed production of a Broadway musical during the 2019-2020 academic year. The 2020 Roger Rees Awards will be held on Sunday, May 17 at the Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS), a New York public school, located in the heart of Manhattan's theater district at 328 West 48th Street.

The Roger Rees Awards recognizes excellence in student performance by conferring the title of Best Actress and Best Actor out of hundreds of students who perform qualifying roles in their high school musical. The 50 students (25 women and 25 men) who receive the highest scores from teams of qualified adjudicators who attend each high school production will participate in a day long training intensive that culminates in a talent showcase performed for a panel of industry professionals who will select the 2 regional winners.

The Roger Rees Awards Best Actor and Best Actress-winners will represent Greater New York at The Broadway League Foundation's Jimmy® Awards (also known as the National High School Musical Theatre Awards), which will be held at the Minskoff Theatre in June.

The Roger Rees Awards (established as the Gershwin Awards in 2010) is represented by three (3) Jimmy Awards-winners namely Marla Louissaint (2015 Best Actress), Andrew Barth Feldman (2018, Best Actor, who played Evan in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway from January 2019-January 2020), and Ekele Ukegbu (2019, Best Actress) who is now attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Meisner Studio.

The Roger Rees Awards for Excellence in Student Performance is presented by Disney Theatricals, produced and general managed by Camp Broadway LLC; with funding by many industry leaders working in/around Broadway. The Broadway Education Alliance is the fiscal sponsor of the Greater New York Student Theatre Awards. The Broadway Education Alliance, a New York-based 501c3, serves as the fiscal sponsor for this and other educational programs.

The Roger Rees Awards recognize the importance of theatre arts education and celebrates the exceptional life and career-long artistic excellence of Broadway's beloved actor/director, Roger Rees. Rees received the Olivier® and Tony® Awards for his performance in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, and Tony nominations for Indiscretions and as co-director of Peter and the Starcatcher. Throughout his life, he was a committed educator and generous mentor to young artists. From his earliest days as a young actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company when he traveled to schools in the Cotswolds of England, to the master-craftsman courses at Columbia University (adjunct professor), Williams College (Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, 2006) and Florida State University (Hoffman Chair); from community outreach he began as Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic to the Leap-Frog internships he pioneered as Artistic Director of Williamstown Theater Festival, Roger spent countless hours in rehearsals and classrooms coaching aspiring writers, actors and directors on character development, craft, collaboration and the vast cannon of theatrical works to be explored.

For more information about the awards, visit www.rogerreesawards.com.