Young: All of these events are a celebration of our beautiful Broadway community.

The Drama Desks are celebrating Broadway, Off Broadway, and I'm just so grateful to be in the presence of my community, you know?

And so this is a night where we just celebrate each other.

Art is required to keep us settled and feeling cohesive and feeling like we're part of humanity.

The fact that this has been the highest-grossing year just shows you that people are hungry for stories.

There's nothing like the theater.

It's happening there, and the performers on stage are playing off of the energy of the audience as well.

There's a synergistic kind of loop that happens, and that only happens in live performance and only happens like that, I think, in the theater.

I'm just so happy to be back.

I've been away from the theater for 10 years.

This summer will be 10 years, and I've missed -- I've missed being on stage so much, but I've missed this community.

It's nice to be recognized, and it's nice to get to be with all the people that are making, like, really amazing theater this year.

It's alive and kicking in a really good way, and I think that it gives people a sense of community, a sense of, you know, wonder.

It gives them things, you know, experiences that you're not gonna get anywhere else.

Art reflects life, and so what's been happening is that there's been so many of these stories that have been told from different backgrounds and experiences, and so I think that that's the key -- just having such a wide variety of diversity, equity, and inclusion -- DEI.

Broadway is sort of the center of theater in the world, and so to have a work like this where we've taken such a huge creative leap of faith and really tried to push the form forward and to have it received and celebrated in the way it has been by the Broadway community is pretty extraordinary.

Kip has been using video work in his work for the last 10 years or so, and I think it's been really wonderful to watch as an audience member for myself and then get to be a part of one of those shows where it's really becoming -- coming to a pinnacle and synthesizing what the purpose of having video integrated into a production is.

For me, it's been really exciting because, like, I'm new to Off-Broadway with "Bad Kreyòl" and it was really great working on that.

And so to be nominated for the Drama Desk Awards is, like, shocking and amazing.

I just surrendered to Jamie and everything that he wanted, really.

He's such a great director, and just trusting him is the most important thing.

I mean, it's such an honor.

I just need to thank Jamie Lloyd for having that dream, that vision for saying, "That's my Norma Desmond" when nobody else probably would have done that.

And so I want to thank him for thinking outside of the box and believing in me.

And I just -- every day I want to knock it out of the park for him.

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