The Black Women on Broadway Awards set the 2026 honorees for its fifth annual ceremony on Tuesday: producer Debra Martin Chase, director Whitney White, performer Alana Raquel Bowers and casting director Destiny Lilly, TheWrap can reveal exclusively.
The ceremony is scheduled for June 1 at Current, the waterfront event venue at Chelsea Piers in New York City.
“This milestone year is a powerful reminder of why we started the Black Women on Broadway Awards,” co-founders Danielle Brooks, Amber Iman and Jocelyn Bioh said in a joint statement. “This moment is designed to uplift and celebrate the achievements of Black women in theater and enjoy an afternoon where this incredible community can really see and feel the impact that we have made both in the industry and for each other.”
Chase — whose recent credits include the 2025 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning “Purpose,” “The Outsiders,” “Illinoise,” “Topdog/Underdog” and “A Strange Loop” — will receive the Audra McDonald Legacy Award, which recognizes significant theatrical achievements across a storied career.
White, the Obie Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated director of Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “The Last Five Years” and “Liberation,” will receive the Kathy A. Perkins Behind the Curtain Award for backstage artistry.
Bowers, an actor, dancer and producer on-the-rise who made her Broadway debut in “Chicken and Biscuits” in 2021, will receive the Florence Mills Shining Star Award, recognizing early-career talent.
And Lilly will receive the Special Citation Trailblazer Award for casting work. The storied casting director is a three-time Emmy nominee for “Only Murders in the Building” and has a list of Broadway credits including “A Strange Loop,” “Purlie Victorious,” “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “Clyde’s.”
Black Women on Broadway (BWOB) was founded in 2019 by Brooks, Iman and Bioh. The organization maintains a list of every Black woman involved in Broadway and Off-Broadway productions each season, which for the 2025-26 season includes nearly 600 women, the highest since the org began tracking. The awards ceremony has grown from 75 attendees in 2022 to over 200 in 2025.
“We are proud to honor these four incredibly talented and hardworking women, Debra Martin Chase, Whitney White, Alana Raquel Bowers, and Destiny Lilly, for their outstanding accomplishments and lasting impact both on and off Broadway,” the founders concluded.
Their goal is to keep expanding the BWOB Awards in the hopes of one day hosting an event that includes every Black woman involved in every show each season.
