Crowds outside the Helen Hayes awards.

The Helen Hayes Awards— the Tony Awards equivalent for the D.C. theater scene—is going to be twice as big as it’ll split into two tiers.

TheatreWashington, the organization the runs the awards each year, announced yesterday that the annual awards show will split its awards into two tiers, “based on the number of union actors in a particular production,” Washington City Paper reports. According to a release on theatreWashington’s website, awards will be handed out to productions that qualify as either a “Helen” production, or a “Hayes” production.

TheatreWashington explains that a production that qualifies as a “Helen” production will have less than 51 percent of the cast appear on an Actors Equity Association Contract, and “has less than three Equity contracted actors in the cast” (basically, most of the actors are non-union actors). Productions with 51 percent or more of the cast working on an Equity Contract will be judged as a “Hayes” production. TheatreWashington also announced that there will be separate sets of judges for “Helen” and “Hayes” productions.

According to theatreWashington, these changes came about after a task force was created to evaluate the effectiveness of how the awards are currently operating, and created these new guidlines to make things run more smoothly.

A Task Force appointed by the theatreWashington Board of Directors carried out this most recent restructuring. Its objectives were to: 1) improve the quality, consistency, and credibility of Awards judging, 2) increase the value of the Helen Hayes Awards brand, 3) improve the process by which Awards nominees and recipients are determined, 4) develop an adjudication system that is administratively manageable, and 5) continuing to build and promote a sense of community among the region’s theatre professionals.

With these new measures for the Helen Hayes Awards, the number of awards given out each year will grow from 27 to a maximum of 47 awards, with basically every category now competing as either a “Helen” production or a “Hayes” production. Last year’s awards slogged in at nearly two hours, and these new measures can only mean that the awards show will be even longer. But theatreWashington says that “as it is logistically difficult to present 47 Awards onstage within a two or three-hour event, the format of the Awards Show is still under consideration.” We’ll see.

Changes for the Helen Hayes Awards will go into effect for the 2014 season, with 2015 awards show being the first one with the new changes implemented.