The awards, which are being presented in association with the luxury brand Burberry, will be co-hosted by the newspaper's chairman and owner, Evgeny Lebedev, Burberry chief creative officer, Christopher Bailey, and American Vogue editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour.
Marking Burberry's involvement, a new category has been created for this year: The Burberry Award for Emerging Director. The other regular categories will also include the Lebedev Special Award, which can be awarded to a writer, performer, director or institution for a specific piece of work of as a lifetime achievement award, and the long-standing Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright, named in honor of Anna Wintour's father and former Editor of the Evening Standard.
A panel of theatre critics that includes the Standard's Henry Hitchings, the Mail on Sunday's Georgina Brown, The Observer's Susannah Clapp, The Times's Libby Purves, the Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer and the International Herald Tribune's Matt Wolf are joined by the Evening Standard's Editor Sarah Sands to choose the winners.