Alumna Kara Branch (M.F.A., dramatic arts, ‘11) has received a 2023 Drama Desk Award nomination for her costume design for According to the Chorus, presented off-Broadway in New York by the New Light Theater Project.

Branch’s nomination is in the category of Best Costume Design for a Play. The category features plays that are produced both on and off-Broadway.

The play, set in the basement quick change room of a Broadway theater in the mid-1980s, centers on chorus girls who are at war with their dressers. The work is a funny, nostalgic behind-the-scenes look at a pivotal period in the history of Broadway where women’s issues and the AIDS crisis play out through the everyday lives of performers and dressers.

The play ran March 23 through April 15 at New York’s 59E59 Theatre. 

The Drama Desk Award is an annual prize recognizing excellence in New York theatre. First bestowed in 1955 as the Vernon Rice Award, the prize initially honored off-Broadway productions, as well as off-off-Broadway, and those in the vicinity. Following the 1964 renaming as the Drama Desk Awards, Broadway productions were included beginning with the 1968–69 award season. The awards are considered a significant American theater distinction.