Why the Tonys Need an Award for Best Ensemble

The playwright Paul Rudnick scripted a delicious red-carpet moment into “In & Out,” his 1997 movie whose comic plot is set in motion by an acceptance speech at the Academy Awards.

Before the ceremony, an entertainment reporter played by Tom Selleck snags an interview with a nominated film star, played by Matt Dillon.

“Basically, to me, awards are meaningless,” the star says, with a slouching self-righteousness. “I’m an artist, it’s about the work, all the nominees are artists, and we shouldn’t be forced to compete with each other like dogs.”

“Well, I hear ya,” the reporter says. “Good point. So then why are you here?”

“Case I win!” the star says, and flashes a smile.

Showbiz awards are inherently fraught. They’re also inherently tantalizing. That’s why we — artists and audience members alike — get so exercised about who goes home with a statuette. For performers, the investment is obvious: Winning can mean more and better work. And we spectators love to see our tastes confirmed when people we admire get the glory we believe they deserve. So when the Tony Awards are handed out on June 12, we’ll be rooting, as always, for the voters to have gotten it right — and grousing, as always, about who they’ve robbed.

Still, I can tell you right now that there will be one egregious omission, a category that needs honoring. One in which cast mates would not have to compete with one another, like dogs or otherwise.

There is no Tony Award for best ensemble. And there really ought to be.

IF THIS CHAOTIC, Covid-stalked Broadway season has taught us anything, it’s that theater is a team sport.

In theory, we knew that already: It takes a collection of artists working together to make each show. But during the industry’s fitful comeback — with its pandemic-fueled moods of terror and celebration, defiance and wariness — we knew it in our bones.

We knew it each time we opened our programs to find those little paper slips, telling us which understudies were stepping into which roles for which actors who’d tested positive for the coronavirus. We got familiar with the uh-oh reflex those notices evoked in us — a gut-level assumption proved wrong each time we lucked into a wonderful understudy. We got familiar, too, with the relief we felt when we opened our programs to find no substitutes.

A cast is a delicate organism, each actor altering the chemistry of the whole. But what ravishing theater a company can create when all its parts work in harmony — the group drawing as needed on the artistry of each member, including those who most nights fill the bench.

WHEN A SHOW wins best play or musical, or best revival, the glory goes to the authors — and maybe even more to the producers, who tend to throng the stage. Those categories aren’t really about the casts. If actors win an award, it’s for a star turn.

Not every piece is built for those, though — “Six,” for example, whose eight Tony nominations, best musical among them, include none in the acting categories. The show’s conceit as a singing competition would seem to encourage lunges for the spotlight. But “Six” is also a concert, and it makes sense that it succeeds best when its actors work in concert: that is, together.

The first time I saw it, in London before it came to Broadway, I realized only afterward that two alternates had been on, one especially strong. But the entire cast had been impressive. It was impossible for me to pick a favorite — because “Six,” a classic ensemble piece, doesn’t actually want its performers to eclipse one another.

I’m not arguing for an award limited to ensemble shows, though, or honoring only supporting players, which is another definition of ensemble. What’s needed is a prize for the entire cast of any kind of Broadway play or musical.

It’s hardly an unprecedented idea. The Drama Desk Awards recognize an outstanding ensemble: This year, “Six.” As theater Twitter likes to point out, the Screen Actors Guild Awards have ensemble categories, too — though with eligibility for inclusion based on contract and billing. The Tonys could be more encompassing than that.

As an adverb in French, “ensemble” means “together.” Which is the only way for actors to achieve the elusive, interconnected oneness of a truly great cast. And a cast that’s brilliant through and through is some kind of miracle.

BACK IN THE FALL and winter, when I was so obsessed with the Broadway revival of “Caroline, or Change” that I saw it eight times, I would be tempted, on my way home from Studio 54, to send a tweet rhapsodizing over a supporting performance or two.

I never did, because whenever I started drafting one in my head, the list always grew too long. I couldn’t possibly mention Arica Jackson as the ebullient singing Washing Machine, and Tamika Lawrence as Caroline’s wry friend, Dotty, without acknowledging the vocal powerhouse Kevin S. McAllister, who played the Dryer and the Bus.

But what about Caissie Levy as the stepmother, Rose, and the child actor Adam Makké as my favorite, most feral Noah? (Full disclosure: I saw him in the role seven times, and one of the other two Noahs never.) Then there were the grandparents, all of them, and Caroline’s children, and N’Kenge’s enchanting Moon. Also the glamorous Radio — that’s three actors right there — and John Cariani as Noah’s sad father, actually playing his clarinet.

The depth of talent astounded me. So when all but one of the show’s cast members got skunked in the Tony nominations — the star, the magnificent Sharon D Clarke, received its sole acting nod — it just bolstered my belief in the need for an ensemble award.

In my fantasy Tonys, the category of best ensemble of a musical would pit the casts of “Caroline” and “Six” against “A Strange Loop,” about a musical theater writer (Jaquel Spivey) and the unquiet chorus of his thoughts, like self-loathing (James Jackson Jr.) and sexual ambivalence (L Morgan Lee); “Company,” with its Bobbie (Katrina Lenk) claustrophobic at the notion of coupledom and surrounded by cautionary tales in the form of her friends (Patti LuPone! Jennifer Simard! Matt Doyle!); and “Girl From the North Country,” whose boardinghouse is so busy that you’re left picking marvels like Todd Almond and Tom Nelis out of the crowd.

For plays, it would be “Clyde’s,” which was marketed as having a star at its center, the terrific Uzo Aduba, but was really a graceful comedy machine built of all the workers in a sandwich shop (Kara Young! Ron Cephas Jones!); “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” which weaves moments of solo poetry (Tendayi Kuumba, Kenita R. Miller and Okwui Okpokwasili are standouts) with sinuous, full-company dance; “Is This a Room,” about the arrest of Reality Winner (Emily Davis), which depended on all four actors for its strange, taut energy; “POTUS,” whose sketch-style silliness and guerrilla politics balance the zany (Rachel Dratch, Lea DeLaria) with the elegant (Vanessa Williams) and the imperious (Julie White); and “Take Me Out,” the baseball play that occupies three of the six spots in the best featured actor category (Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jesse Williams and Michael Oberholtzer).

The finest ensembles are about teamwork, and the generosity of the players.

I HAVE NEVER been a sports fan, yet I keep thinking about the first time I saw the Boston Celtics play, back in the Larry Bird era. I remember being riveted by the way the players passed the ball to one another, sharing it for the greater good. It was a team full of stars, but it seemed to me that it wasn’t a star-driven team. And that made them, like Ted Lasso’s Richmond footballers (played by actors who won a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award), incredibly fun to watch.

It could be that adding a Tony Award for best ensemble would alter slightly the nature of what gets produced on Broadway, giving a boost to shows that aren’t engineered to coast — as plenty of sports teams, and not a few Broadway shows, are — on a superstar’s appeal.

Which might maneuver Broadway a little closer to theater’s own ideals.

In an interview several years ago, Mark Rylance told me about his discomfort with awards, including the Tonys. He said that once, after winning, he’d felt “profoundly depressed” and “really lonely”; that he’d been much happier belonging to his little pack of nominees than being singled out and made to walk past them on his way up to the podium.

“The thing is,” he said, “I came into the theater because of the group, the community.”

Granted, Rylance is one of theater’s most lauded actors. Easy for him to shudder at the specter of receiving accolades. Still, the comfort he professed to feel as part of a coterie of nominees rang true: “That’s all I ever wanted,” he said, “was to be in a company.”

That sense of belonging is a potent attraction for a lot of actors who devote their lives to the stage. And when a cast meshes so well that it manages to create something sublime, shouldn’t all of them be honored as one?

This would mean, of course, forcing entire casts to compete against one another. Like dogs, as the movie star in “In & Out” would say.

But on Broadway, that most Darwinian of theatrical landscapes, isn’t that what shows do every night anyway?