The Columbia College Chicago School of Theatre and Dance proudly congratulates former student and faculty member and Columbia College Honorary Degree recipient David Cromer HDR ’17, who has been nominated for a 2025 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for Dead Outlaw. The show, which opened April 27 at the Longacre Theatre in New York City’s midtown theatre district, was also nominated in the categories of Best New Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Itamar Moses), Best Original Score (David Yazbek and Eric Della Penna), Best Leading Actor in a Musical (Andrew Durand), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Jeb Brown), and Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Julia Knitel). For a complete list of 2025 Tony Award nominations, click here.

As previously reported in this blog, Cromer won the 2018 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for The Band’s Visit, which also won that year’s Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (Itamar Moses), and Best Original Score (David Yazbek) as well as the leading performances by Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk and the supporting performance by Ari’el Stachel.

“As directed by David Cromer, in another of his daringly poker-faced stagings, the show is to Broadway what a ghost train is to an amusement park, with screams and laughs but much better music,” wrote New York Times critic Jesse Green in his review of Dead Outlaw. Green also described the production as “gorgeously perverse,” “a fabulously twisted yarn,” and “a surprisingly feel-good Broadway musical.”

Cromer is also the director of the hit play Good Night, and Good Luck, starring and co-written by George Clooney. That show has received several Tony Award nominations, including one for Heather Gilbert, a former faculty member in the Columbia College Chicago School of Theatre and Dance’s Theatre Design and Technology program, for Best Lighting Design of a Play. Gilbert also designed the lights for Dead Outlaw. As previously reported in this blog, Gilbert won the 2020 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for a Play for her lighting design for the drama The Sound Inside, also directed by Cromer.

The 2025 Tony Awards ceremony will be held on June 8 to recognize achievement in Broadway productions during the 2024–25 season. The ceremony will be held at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and air on CBS.