GMHC’s Cabaret & Howard Ashman Award is a star-studded event featuring Broadway actors and celebrities performing Broadway classics. GMHC will honor Tony, Grammy and Emmy winning Broadway legend and activist André De Shields with the 2023 Howard Ashman Award at the 10th Annual GMHC Cabaret 2023 on Monday, February 6, 2023 at Joe’s Pub at The Public, 425 Lafayette Street in New York. The program begins at 7pm.
Guest performers TBA.
The evening will be produced by Courter Simmons and Jason Cianciotto, who created the event in 2013. Kyle Brazil will music direct.
The Howard Ashman Award is named for the Oscar, Golden Globe, and Grammy Award-winning lyricist of Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Little Shop of Horrors who died of AIDS-related complications in 1991. Proceeds from the cabaret will directly support GMHC’s lifesaving programs, which benefit people living with or affected by HIV and AIDS each year through HIV testing and prevention programs, mental health and substance use counseling, legal, housing, and nutrition services-and more.
Click here for more information.
In a career spanning more than half a century, André De Shields has acquired a number of sobriquets, among them—”Broadway Deity,” “Professional Charmer” and “Papa Dré.” A showstopper at age 76, André was the triple-crown winner of the 2019 award season, garnering Tony, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Grammy Awards for his universally praised role as Hermes, Messenger to the Gods, in Hadestown. De Shields has also distinguished himself as director, philanthropist and educator. His defining theatrical performances include roles in the original Broadway productions of The Full Monty (Tony Award nomination), Play On! (Tony Award nomination), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Emmy Award) and the titular role in The Wiz. Currently, De Shields is experiencing growing pains as he prepares for his next adventure as Actor/Activist, eradicating the inauthentic while elevating the inexplicable. Ubuntu!
Backstage Pass with Lia Chang 