The NYMF Awards for Excellence will be presented at NYMF’s Fall Gala, to be held at the Hudson Theater on Nov. 12 at 6 PM.

Winners will be selected by a jury composed of theatre artists, producers, and journalists, including: Jen Costello (Live Nation), Robert Diamond (BroadwayWorld.com), Frank Evans (BMI), Peter Filichia (Newark Star-Ledger/TheaterMania), Tim Jerome (National Music Theater Network), Clifford Lee Johnson III (Manhattan Theatre Club), Beverly MacKeen (New World Stages), Matt Windman (AM New York) and Wayman Wong (Playbill.com/New York Daily News).

The awards will highlight achievement in nine categories, including: Most Promising New Work, Excellence in Musical Theatre Writing (in three separate categories – book, music, and lyrics), Excellence in Direction & Choreography (honoring a show’s complete creative team), Excellence in Design (honoring a show’s complete design staff – set, costumes, lighting and sound), Outstanding Ensemble Performance and Outstanding Individual Performance.

Award for Excellence candidates will be drawn from eligible productions in the festival, including the thirty-three full productions that make up the Next Link, Invited Works, and Dance Series, as well as the workshop production of Alive in the World.

In addition to the juried awards, the festival is continuing its audience prize, which is sponsored this year by Verizon Wireless. Audience members vote for the Verizon Best of Fest Prize by sending a text message to with the code for their favorite show. Details on voting are available on the festival website, www.nymf.org and in each performance venue, and votes will continue to be accepted until the final day of the festival.

Now in its third year, The New York Musical Theatre Festival is a three-week event in NYC that has premiered over 70 musicals in its first two years, becoming the largest musical theatre event in American history. The Festival launched shows that have found life beyond the three-week event: Altar Boyz, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Captain Louie, and more recently, [title of show] and Shout! had developmental productions under the NYMF umbrella.

NYMF 2006 will feature 312 performances, including the premiering of 34 new musicals and 84 musical theatre events and a broad range of programming that will include full productions, developmental works, concerts, seminars and panels, partner events, commissions and, for the first time, the NYMF Dance Series.

The Next Link Project makes up more than half of the productions that play at the NYMF — the other works seen at the festival are part of the NYMF Invited Works, which gives international productions their American debuts.

Of the more than 30 full productions in the Festival this year, half have been selected through the Next Link Project, an open submission process in which musicals undergo blind evaluations by a reading committee before being selected by a jury of leading theater professionals. From almost 400 submissions, 15 works were awarded the opportunity for full production in the 2006 Festival.

The Next Link productions include Desperate Measures, Emerald Man, Flight of the Lawnchair man, Go-Go Beach, Have a Nice Life, Hot and Sweet, Journey to the West, Kingdom, Lunch, Oedipus for Kids, River’s End, Smoking Bloomberg, The Screams of Kitty Genovese, Three Sides and Warrior.

The Invited Productions include Behind the Limelight, Gutenberg! The Musical, Having It Almost, J.O.B. the Hip-Hopera, Party Come Here, The Children, The Man in My Head, The Night of the Hunter, The Paisley Sisters’ Christmas Special, The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, This Could Be Love, This Could Be Love, Virgins and White Noise.

New this year, NYMF presents The Dance Series, a group of choreography-driven productions exploring the relationship between dance and musical theatre: All is Love, Common Grounds and School Daze.

The Developmental Series includes Alive in the World, Chang & Eng, Cumberland Blues, Drift, Magpie, Saint Heaven, The Tales of Custard the Dragon, The Chocolate Tree and Wallenberg.

The NYMF Concert and Special Event Series includes Baby Wants Candy, Blue Lou and the Bullyfish, Little by Little, The Macguffin?, The Tales of Custard the Dragon, The Unauthorized Musicology of Ben Folds, NYMF at Ars Nova, A New Generation of Song: The Future of Musical Theatre, Angels, Illyria, Maria, Maria, Moopim and What@Trip!. (Playbill.com is a media partner of the New York Musical Theatre Festival 2006.)