A pair of past Tony Award®-winners will be on hand on Tuesday morning, May 13 to announce the nominations for the American Theatre Wing’s 2008 Tony Awards.

David Hyde Pierce, who is currently starring on Broadway in Curtains, joins “Grey’s Anatomy” star and fellow Spamalot original cast member Sara Ramirez to do the honors. The nominations announcement, which is sponsored by IBM, will take place at 8:30 a.m. ET at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. CBS will broadcast portions of the announcement live during “The Early Show.” In New York City, NY1 News will provide live cable TV coverage of the event.

At TonyAwards.com, we’ll post the complete nominee list as soon as it is available. On Tuesday afternoon, we’ll post a video clip of the announcement, courtesy of NY1. You can also sign up to have the nominations list e-mailed to you on Tuesday morning.

Also on May 13, tickets to the 62nd annual Tony Awards go on sale at 9:00 a.m. ET. We’ll post a link and a phone number here at Tony Awards.com. The Tony ceremony will take place on June 15, 2008 at Radio City Music Hall®, and will be broadcast live that evening on CBS at 8/7c.

Pierce and Ramirez will announce the nominations in each of the 27 competitive categories. Productions that opened during the 2007-2008 Broadway season on before the May 7 cut-off date may be eligible for Tony Awards this year--see our list of eligible productions. In addition, there will be an announcement of the Regional Theatre Tony Award recipient, and of any Special Tony Awards that the Tony Awards Administration Committee may choose to bestow. The 2008 Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre will be announced in the fall.

David Hyde Pierce is currently appearing in Curtains as Lieutenant Frank Cioffi, stage-struck detective called upon to solve a backstage murder. That’s the role for which he won the 2007 Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical. Curtains plays its final performance at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on June 29. Though known to millions of television viewers as psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane on the sitcom “Frasier,” he is also a stage veteran, having appeared in numerous stage productions on Broadway and off—including the 2005 Best Musical winner, Monty Python’s Spamalot.

Sara Ramirez made her Broadway debut in Paul Simon’s The Capeman and appeared in other shows, but it was in Spamalot that she found her grail. She created the role of The Lady of the Lake and won a 2005 Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She has since joined the cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” as Dr. Calliope “Callie” Torres.

This is the third consecutive year that the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will host the Tony Nominations Announcement. The Lincoln Center Library is the location of a new exhibition entitled “Writing to Character: Songwriters & the Tony Awards” which spotlights the more than 70 Broadway shows that have won Tonys for either Best Musical or Best Score. Co-presented by the Library and Tony Award Productions, this exhibition is on view now through June 14, 2008 in the Library’s Vincent Astor Gallery. Admission is free.