Theatre Night Awards
Theatre Night Awards recognizes excellence in the production of high school and middle school straight plays throughout New Jersey.
Our Mission
Our goal is to promote and advance the commitment to high-quality straight play production in New Jersey’s secondary schools. The awards honor the accomplishments of individual achievement of both students and educators in the areas of performance, direction, design and technical theatre, as well as outstanding productions.
We endeavor to raise the bar in the area of straight play production in New Jersey schools. Theatre Night Awards has positively affected the level of directing, acting, design and production work in straight plays. Educators are choosing from a wider and more sophisticated range of plays for production and are experimenting with updated methods and styles of staging plays.
By rewarding challenging choices in the production of new plays and classics, we have observed that more school theatre programs are producing Greek and Shakespeare plays, challenging works by such modern writers as Bertolt Brecht, Brian Friel, Arthur Miller, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, as well as new plays and original works.
Since 2020, we now accept musicals. We evaluate musicals based on direction, technical elements, choreography, acting ability and ensemble work. Vocal quality and technique will not be considered when evaluating performers.