Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Peek at Broadway Comeback: Times Event With “Me and the Sky”

      by

      When The Times staged a musical number for its live event series, the performance served as a sneak preview of a theater world preparing for takeoff.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.In March, Zoe Gertz, an Australian actress, was asked by The New York Times if she would be interested in singing the soaring anthem “Me and the Sky” for an episode of its Offstage event series, which examines the theater industry during its pandemic hiatus. The number is from the Australian touring production of the 9/11 musical “Come From Away.”After teams worked on in-house music and stage direction, Ms. Gertz belted the ebullient anthem to the rafters of a simple stage at Her Majesty’s Theater in Melbourne, sans audience but backed by six musicians and five castmates of the production’s female ensemble. And it all came together in just over two weeks.“I am suddenly aliiiiiive,” Ms. Gertz sang with an irrepressible smile as she told of her character’s love for flying.The sentiment seems to be spreading. Broadway’s reopening will now occur in August. In Australia, “Frozen,” “Hamilton” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” were running at or near full capacity in Sydney and Melbourne for months (though masks were still required) until a recent lockdown in Melbourne put shows in that city on hold again. The performance for the Times event served as both a reminder of theater’s vitality during the pandemic and a preview of the energy to come.The musical number began to take shape in early March after The Times’s theater reporter, Michael Paulson, suggested recording a special video of the inspirational song for the Offstage series, which streamed live on April 29 and is still viewable by Times subscribers.“We wanted a song that was both good and would make sense out of context for people who hadn’t seen the show,” Mr. Paulson said. “It’s also a song that works without a very elaborate band or orchestra and is essentially a solo number.”The four-and-a-half-minute track chronicles the tale of the real-life American Airlines pilot Beverley Bass, who was among the pilots with planes full of passengers who were diverted to Newfoundland on Sept. 11, 2001.“One of the many emotions captured in this song is Beverley having to come to terms with the job she loves being put on hold, and not knowing when she might fly again,” said Rachel Karpf, the director of programming at The Times who helped plan the event with Beth Weinstein and Rachel Czipo. “We saw some parallels to the experience of theater workers in Australia and around the world this past year, as their industry was brought to a near-total standstill by the pandemic.”Ms. Karpf said the Events team began discussing ideas for the episode in early January with Mr. Paulson; Scott Heller, then The Times’s theater editor; and Damien Cave, the Sydney bureau chief. Mr. Cave and Mr. Paulson were working on a story about the return of Broadway shows in Australia, which has been much more successful at containing the virus than the United States. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      How Comfy Are Your Seats? The Space

      by

      We absolutely adore The Space Arts Centre. And not just because one of our reviewers also happens to be heavily involved! It’s a venue that promises a home for exciting new writing, offering a place to try out new works that might not otherwise get the chance to grow. We might not love every play we see there, but we love that they are always willing to take the risk to try something different. It’s what draws us back at every opportunity.

      So who better then to be the second venue in our How Comfy Are Your Seats? series than The Space’s Deputy Director, Matthew Jameson, to share more on why you really should be visiting this wonderful building soon.

      Let’s dive straight in, what’s your role at The Space?

      It was an ever shifting, no-two-days-the-same kind of job even before the pandemic, and now it’s even more varied. I tend to manage the visiting companies and productions, co-ordinate marketing, deal with site maintenance and handle in-house producing, with a few bits of dramaturgy, programming and directing thrown in. I’m also the livestream camera operator and currently the de facto bar manager (but don’t get me talking about the bar…)

      We’ll be honest, last time we come we got a little lost due to road works, tell us the best way to get there.

      Not a problem, every first visit is a step into the unknown, but it does get easier. You can’t go too far wrong with the 5 minutes walk from Mudchute DLR. And we’ve got 3 buses that stop right outside the venue with a helpful announcement from Canary Wharf, who have just streamlined the bus traffic. If you’re feeling leisurely, you can catch the Thames Clipper to Canary Wharf Pier, which is a lush journey from Central London or the East.

      Right, we know how to find you, but once we get there, what’s on offer before we head in for a show? Is it time to mention that bar?

      Oh go on, get me talking about the bar! We’ve recently taken on management of the in-house bar (now named ‘the Space Bar’) and we are loving being pub landlords. We’ve got a long, sun-trap beer garden for this weather as well as an atmospheric inside seating area just at the back above the theatre, converted from what used to be the church’s vestry. We’ve been listening to our artists and audiences about what they want from a bar, so have been making some changes to our stock which have been very popular. We’re in the process of re-opening the kitchen to bring back a limited menu, hopefully from mid/late June, which we’ll expand as we go.

      And once we head inside, what’s the size and layout for a show?

      Under social distancing, we’ve been operating in either end-on, or reverse end-on for our raised main stage. Currently our max capacity is 40, and we’ve already had some sold out shows since re-opening. We’re lucky that we have no fixed seating, so in non-Covid times, anything goes! In the round, traverse, promenade, you name it, someone has staged it here.

      What type of shows are The Space’s forte?

      We’re all about new writing and/or emerging artists. But ’emerging’ doesn’t just mean artists under 30! We’re all about giving a platform to companies who want to showcase their skills, make socially relevant work or just need a supportive environment to get their show off the ground. For internal productions, we’ve had a cracking run of new writing festivals pre, during and post-lockdowns, which we’re bringing home with the Foreword Festival (playing from Next Tuesday 8th with Laura Horton‘s Labyrinth Diet to open). We’ve got four new scripts which were selected from our script development programme, ScriptSpace, that we’re giving full productions to.

      What can people normally expect to pay for a ticket for a show?

      It’s largely up to the companies that perform with us, but we try to cap our standard price and concessions as £15 & £12. For online viewers, we’ve been conscious of economic accessibility, so our livestream prices operate on 3 bands: £10 standard, £15 supporters rate and £5 low income rate. We want to make sure that everyone who wants to see our shows can, regardless of financial or geographical barriers.

      Any personal highlights from past shows?

      We’ve had a lot of brilliant work during my time here. I always love work that fully embraces the uniqueness of the venue, so Threedumb Theatre‘s revolutionary The Black Cat was a great example of how you can truly embrace streaming and digital theatre fusion. I also have great memories of Two Fest, our last in-house, in-venue production before the pandemic, 13 plays over three bills across two weeks. Absolute madness, but nuanced, varied work throughout.

      Do you have any “they played here first” stories of big names or shows that started with you?

      It’s our 25th anniversary as a venue this September, so we’ve seen a fair few who are now household names (including Les Enfants Terrible) as well as our dear patron Sir Ian [McKellen], who rehearsed and kicked off his 80th birthday one-man show here. We’re more excited about the next steps and developments of recent projects such as Four O’Clock Flowers by Louise Breckon-Richards, which is hitting the film festival circuit having debuted as a play at the last Foreword Festival in 2019. The companies and artists we have at the Space today are tomorrow’s headliners, see them here first!

      What are the plans for the coming months then, what exciting shows have you got lined up for us?

      We’re currently programmed for our Summer/Autumn season until the end of October, which is a far longer season than we’ve ever had before, but we’ve had plenty of pre-Covid projects to reschedule as well as many new and exciting shows approach us. I’m particularly excited for our first partnership with the London Horror Festival in October (who are currently taking applications here). There’s also a lot of top secret things being lined up for the 25th anniversary, but you’ll have to watch this Space.

      So tell us just why we should all come along to see a show at The Space? What’s your unique selling point?

      It’s a gorgeous, grade II listed building with the most reasonably priced, atmospheric bar in London. The theatre itself is intimate enough to be personal and grand enough to be epic. The shows we programme are made by the theatre innovators of the future and you’ll want to see them here first.

      Finally, and obviously the most important question of all, how comfy are the chairs?

      The chairs themselves? More padded than average. But the legroom? Unbeatable!

      ===============================

      Thanks to Matthew for finding time in his very busy day to chat with us. You can find a list of reviews and articles from the Space below. More

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Review: Connection, Interrupted, in ‘Communion’

      by

      Christopher Chen’s new play is big on concept and cleverness, but withholds the intimacy that theater-lovers have craved during the pandemic.Last March, I booked tickets to see “The Headlands,” a new play by Christopher Chen. A few days later, live theater vanished like some awful magic act. I never made it to that show. But now Chen, a high-concept playwright with a vertiginous approach to dramatic structure, has created a new one, “Communion,” a clever and chilly digital wisp produced by the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and experienced on Zoom. To see it, as in-person performances prepare to return elsewhere, provides a dizzy kind of symmetry.“Communion,” directed by Pam MacKinnon and starring Stacy Ross, begins as so many recent shows have. A house manager greets the audience (about 40 people on the night I attended), offering a brief tutorial on cameras and mics and gallery view. Then Ross, a beloved Bay Area performer, appears, speaking from what looks like a basement. A nice basement. Ross, wearing a blazer, pigtails and a shrunken porkpie hat, has through-the-roof charisma, even in a Zoom window. This helped during the pro forma opening monologue, a friendly acknowledgment of the limits and possibilities of remote theater. “I always thought it would be interesting to do a Zoom show that somehow really took advantage of this strange intimacy this platform has,” Ross said excitedly.Like works by Will Eno and Lucas Hnath, Chen’s create a tension between the ideas at play — here, presence and absence, truth and lies, trust and manipulation — and the characters who inhabit them. There’s so much intelligence in “Communion,” enhanced by Ross’s mischievous performance and MacKinnon’s sleek direction. But the overall effect is somewhat stingy. It might have felt differently earlier in the pandemic. But at this point, most of us with working Wi-Fi have already thought plenty about presence and absence. I would trade the conceptualism for something more embracingly human.In fairness, “Communion” offers that, too. Late in the show, an unseen force sorts the audience into breakout rooms, asking us to introduce ourselves and perhaps discuss one of the prompts Chen had emailed before the show — chiefly, “In one or two sentences, can you describe a guiding principle you have?” Awkwardly and then with more ease, we introduced ourselves. One man shared a guiding principle, often attributed to Einstein: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”The rest of us had no principles. Still, we reveled in one another’s company and in the experience of sharing a work of art together, even though we sat some 4,000 miles apart. (In this, it resembles the recent efforts of groups like 600 Highwaymen.) It made me nostalgic for all those taken-for-granted lobby nods, that post-show race around the corner to discuss the play at a safe distance, that feeling of constituting an audience.“Communion” ends with a few conceptual switcheroos designed to make you question everything you have seen and heard. And I did. But these reveals dangle what people who love theater hunger for — connection, intimacy and yes, sure, communion — then snatch it back again, like Tantalus on a video call. Did you suspend your disbelief? Sucker.I like my disbelief suspended. And if a year of seeing shows from my bedroom has taught me anything, it is that I will take theater where I can find it. Here, I’d locate it less in Chen’s forceful smarts and more in those halting, unscripted breakout room moments, in a grid of people marking time with good will and small talk until we can really, actually be together again.CommunionThrough June 27; act-sf.org. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      National Black Theater Plans Next Act in a New Harlem High-Rise

      by

      The pathbreaking company plans to replace its Harlem home with a 21-story building with apartments, retail and a new theater.It was more than 50 years ago that Barbara Ann Teer rented space in a building at 125th Street and Fifth Avenue in Harlem that would serve as the home of a nascent organization called National Black Theater.The theater blossomed into an important cultural anchor, presenting productions by, and about, Black Americans when their stories rarely appeared on mainstream stages, and hosting artists including Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Nina Simone, Nikki Giovanni and Maya Angelou. When the building was destroyed in a fire in 1983, many feared that the theater was doomed, said Sade Lythcott, Teer’s daughter. But Teer had another idea: She decided to buy the damaged 64,000-square-foot building on Fifth Avenue, with a vision of revitalizing it and trying to use real estate to help pay for the theater’s work.Sade Lythcott, the theater’s chief executive, sees the development as a continuation of the plans that her mother, Barbara Ann Teer, made after founding the theater.Braylen Dion for The New York Times“She saw it as the next piece of this temple to Black liberation, which is ownership,” said Lythcott, the theater’s chief executive. “Ownership would allow the real estate to subsidize the art, which was a model that would disrupt the standard practice of nonprofit theater funding.”The move did not solve all their problems. There were struggles over the years, and a series of financial disputes that at one point left the theater on the brink of losing its home, but the work continued. Now National Black Theater is getting ready for its next act: It is replacing its longtime home with a 21-story building that will include a mix of housing, retail and, on floors three through five, a gleaming new home for the theater.Lythcott and other National Black Theater leaders see the $185 million project, and the partnership they are entering with developers, as a new chapter with the financial and institutional backing to allow them to live out the dream of Teer, who died in 2008: to nurture a space where Black artists can thrive, and the company can work to bring a deeper sense of racial justice to the American theater industry.“What we’re building today really has been informed in all ways by this blueprint that Dr. Teer put into place starting in 1968,” Lythcott said. “It feels like what our community of Black artists and the community of Harlem deserve.”To realize the development project, National Black Theater has partnered with a new real estate firm, Ray, which was founded by Dasha Zhukova, a Russian-American art collector and philanthropist. Also joining the project are the subsidized housing developer L + M, the architect Frida Escobedo, the firm Handel Architects, and the design firms working on National Black Theater’s space, Marvel, Charcoalblue, and Studio & Projects.The planning for the new development has come at a turning point in the theater world. With theaters closed for more than a year because of the pandemic, many institutions have been called on to turn inward and interrogate their own histories of racism and inequity, with many prominent voices calling for change when theaters reopen. It is the kind of discussion National Black Theater has been involved in for decades. This year Lythcott has advised Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on reopening the arts and, as chair for the Coalition of Theaters of Color, has spoken up about racial justice in arts budget negotiations.Before they decided to work together, Lythcott and Zhukova had to have a frank conversation early on about a high-profile misstep in Zhukova’s past.On Martin Luther King’s Birthday in 2014, an online fashion magazine published a photo of Zhukova sitting on a chair — designed by the Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard — that was constructed from a cushion arranged atop a sculpture of a partially clothed Black woman laying on her back, in some sort of bondage. Zhukova apologized for the photo, saying that using this artwork in a photo shoot was regrettable, “as it took the artwork totally out of its intended context.”Lythcott learned of this photo just before she met Zhukova for dinner for the first time — in fact she was Googling Zhukova on her phone at the restaurant before they met to discuss the development project. At the dinner, Zhukova brought up the incident first, Lythcott said, explaining that she would understand if the episode cast too much of a shadow on the project. But Lythcott wasn’t fazed by it, she said, because it was clear all that Zhukova had learned from the incident.“Perhaps that chair was the best thing that ever happened to Dasha,” Lythcott said, “because it was catalytic in expanding the lens by which she sees the world.”In an email, Zhukova said that she was “deeply sorry” for the photo and said that it had started her on a “journey of continued learning and education.”“I am so grateful that Sade sees the person I am trying to be on my continued journey toward personal growth,” she wrote.Barbara Ann Teer, center foreground, founder of National Black Theater, with the cast of one of her productions in 1970.via National Black Theater ArchivesThe new building being planned, for 2033 Fifth Avenue, is slated to include 222 units of housing, an event space and a communal living room where people might eat, work and hang out; a news release says “amenities will include health and wellness programming.”The development project is more than a decade in the making, with several false starts. Lythcott and her brother — Michael Lythcott, who is the chair of the National Black Theater’s board — see it as a realization of their mother’s dream, while recognizing that she might not have taken some of the paths they chose.“She never would have partnered with someone like Ray; she never would have had financing from Goldman Sachs,” Michael Lythcott said, noting that Teer had wanted full control over the building, and preferred to keep involvement limited to those inside the community.But it is all a means to an end that their mother energetically championed throughout her life: an “ecosystem by which Black people in particular are full-throated, full-voiced, fully rooted in their own liberation,” Sade Lythcott said.By the time construction starts this fall, theater in New York is likely to be back in full force. While the new building is going up, National Black Theater will use the Apollo Theater’s office space and two of its performance spaces. And by the time construction is slated to end, in spring 2024, National Black Theater leaders hope that the space will become a place to convene, both for art and the kind of community interaction that was sorely missed over the past year.“In the wake of this pandemic,” said Jonathan McCrory, National Black Theater’s executive artistic director, “there’s going to be a kind of psychic grief that is going to need to have a healing center.” More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Playlist: ET radio show 2 June 2021

      by

      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews, Radio playlist

      3 June 2021

      13 Views

      Interviews

      These are audio interviews that were broadcast during the show.

      Laura Horton, playwright of Labyrinth Diet. Two parts.

      You can read more about this play and Laura Horton in our written interview here. You can book tickets to watch Labyrinth Diet via the Space website here for tickets to watch live at the venue, or here for tickets to watch the livestream. Full details on the website.

      Mary Pollard, reviewer for Everything Theatre – links provided are to the written reviews on our site.

      Other Shows Mentioned

      Links are for reviews, unless noted otherwise.

      Music Playlist

      Life – Excites MeAll We Are – Burn It All OutAlfie Templeman – Everybody’s Gonna Love SomebodyAdwaith – Lipstick CochIndian Queens – Us Against The WorldModerate Rebels – These Are The Good TimesPenfriend – SeventeenSteve Mason – America Is Your BoyfriendElbow – White Noise White HeatFujiya & Miyagi – Transparent ThingsHaelos – End of World PartyYoung Husband – Modern LieOrange Juice – Rip It UpNitin Sawhney – You AreIan McNabb – You Bring Good ThingsWe Are Scientists – One In One OutPenelope Isles – ChlorineEyre Llew & In The Endless Zanhyang We Are – MoeveLorde – Green LightThe Horrors – Still Life More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      It’s Outside, but Shakespeare in the Park Still Plans Social Distancing

      by

      The free, beloved summer tradition will enjoy an extended run, but currently plans very limited capacity, with masks required.One of New York City’s hottest tickets is about to get even harder to get: When Shakespeare in the Park returns to the Delacorte Theater this summer after losing a year to the pandemic, it plans to sharply limit capacity in order to follow state guidelines, officials announced on Thursday.The 1,800-seat theater currently plans to allow only 428 attendees for each performance of “Merry Wives,” the intermission-free adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” being put on by the Public Theater; it says it must do so under the state’s current, but rapidly-shifting, rules. But there will be more performances: The show will run three weeks longer than originally scheduled, through Sept. 18 rather than Aug. 28.In a news release, officials said the capacity limit was put in place because of the need for social distancing. They said all theatergoers over age 2 would be required to wear a mask and either provide proof of full vaccination or a recent negative Covid test to attend.The decision to significantly limit the size of the audience stands in contrast to some other New York venues that have gotten permission to reopen to bigger crowds. Radio City Music Hall, for instance, plans to reopen this month to a full, indoor house of maskless, vaccinated ticket holders. Broadway shows have started ticket sales for what will be full-capacity performances, some of which will begin in mid-September. And on the other side of the country, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles has decided to start selling all 18,000 of its seats.It is possible that the limits could be eased before opening night. A spokeswoman for the Public said Thursday that New York health and safety protocols for small and medium-sized performing arts spaces still require six feet of social distance between patrons. She said the theater would await updated guidance from the state and would adapt its policies as needed. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Broadway Theater Owner Cited by OSHA in Stagehand’s Fatal Fall

      by

      Federal regulators cited the Shubert Organization for four workplace safety violations in the death of an employee in the Winter Garden Theater.Federal regulators have cited the Shubert Organization for four serious workplace safety violations and proposed a fine of $45,642 in connection with the death of an employee who fell from a ladder while working at the Winter Garden Theater last fall.The citations, from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, were issued on May 11, six months after Peter Wright, a 54-year-old stagehand, fell nearly 50 feet from a narrow, raised platform while performing routine maintenance in the theater.OSHA issues these serious citations when, according to its review, lapses have led to hazards carrying a “substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result.” In the Shubert Organization’s case, OSHA did not find that the violations were willful ones, in which an employer “intentionally and knowingly” violates the law.The Shubert Organization has set up a meeting to discuss the citations and penalties, James C. Lally, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor, said. If the two parties do not reach a settlement, the company can still contest the citations, Mr. Lally said. Otherwise, they will be obligated to pay the full amount.A spokesman for the Shubert Organization declined a request for comment, citing the ongoing investigation.The violations issued to the group, which is the largest landlord on Broadway, included having a wooden ladder coated with a material that could obscure structural defects and two instances of a ladder used for a purpose for which it was not designed.Mr. Wright, who was from Milford, Conn., was a stagehand for Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the labor union that represents professional stage employees in New York, for 34 years. He and his wife of 23 years, Marcie Lowy Wright, met when they were both working as stagehands for a 1990s “Grease” revival at the Eugene O’Neill Theater.James J. Claffey Jr., the president of Local 1, wrote in a tribute in November that Mr. Wright “had a work ethic that was nothing short of exemplary, was extremely talented and skilled in his craft, and he was one of the finest riggers/flyman in our industry.”The last show to play at the Winter Garden Theater had been “Beetlejuice,” which had been set to end its run on June 6, 2020, before the theater, like all on Broadway, shut on March 12 because of the pandemic; “Beetlejuice” was not slated to return. A revival of “The Music Man” that will star Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster is set to begin performances in December and open next February.Bill Evans, a spokesman for the Shubert Organization, said at the time of Mr. Wright’s death that most stagehands had not been working at the organization’s other theaters during the pandemic shutdown.“We mourn the loss of our valued colleague,” he said in a statement. “Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family during this difficult time.”Dylan Foley, who was a friend and co-worker of Mr. Wright’s, wrote in a Facebook tribute in November that Mr. Wright was “completely fearless in how he lived his life as a stagehand” and often did the work of three men.“He had a dry wit, an unstoppable work ethic, and a trademarked grin,” Mr. Foley wrote. “If you asked for something from Pete, his line was, ‘For you, the grid’s the limit.’” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      A Chance to Fix the Tonys, and So Many Things to Fix

      by

      It has been a tough year for Broadway. Now it’s time to get tough on the show that too often honors investors instead of achievers.You know that hideous scrum of investors storming the stage when their show is named best play or best musical at the Tony Awards?Well, they’re heading back unless somebody stops them.The 2021 Tonys, which because of the pandemic are actually the 2020 Tonys, will be awarded on Sept. 26. That will make 27 months since the last telecast, in June 2019: plenty of time to rethink what has become a reliably mortifying experience. But to do that, Broadway will have to face up to the way it has traditionally favored the financiers over the artists in its shotgun wedding of art and commerce.Take the 2014 telecast, on which Jennifer Hudson sang the bombastic title song from the musical “Finding Neverland.”Was that show in the running for any awards? No — it did not even open until the following season. Was Hudson at least supposed to appear in it? No, but she was more famous than anyone who did. Was the staging, in which Peter Pan performed a ballet in green camo while Hudson swanned nearby in silver lamé, even remotely understandable?Well, yes, if you knew that the producer of “Finding Neverland” was Harvey Weinstein.Even when not being manipulated by moneybags, the awards have regularly represented Broadway as a neurotic mess: defensive about its marginality, embarrassed by its serious works and insecure about its commercial appeal. In the opening number at the 2019 awards, the host, James Corden, spent more than nine minutes begging the CBS audience to honor the liveness of live theater, even as he listed the many delightful and far more accessible experiences available on television, including his own CBS talk show.James Corden, flanked by Kelli O’Hara, Brooks Ashmanskas and other Broadway performers, during the opening number of the 2019 Tony Awards.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNow is the time for the Tonys to pull their act together. Why should the best show people somehow keep making the dullest, tackiest hodgepodge of a show?Which is not to say it will be easy, especially this year. Aside from reflecting the disaster of the pandemic, which saw Broadway darkened, its ranks thinned by disease and thousands out of work, the Tonys will have to address, within the context of an entertainment product, the racism long built into the theatrical ecosystem and the recent calls for change. That’s a story not very susceptible to jazz hands.With so much to do, the announcement that only three competitive awards will be given out within the two-hour CBS broadcast — the other 22 having been relegated to a two-hour preshow on the streaming service Paramount+ — may prove to be good news instead of the abomination it at first seemed.That’s because pushing most of the awards into one compartment and most of the singing and dancing into another may allow the producers and writers of this year’s show, many of them veterans of previous Tonys, to celebrate both parts of the Broadway package more fully. The gravity and the razzmatazz can each have their say, in their own style, instead of fighting for dominance and airtime, and losing jointly.There was a time when razzmatazz had no part in the proceedings. In the early years of the awards, which were first televised, to a local New York audience, in 1956, the ceremony was more like a funeral directors’ dinner, with little or no entertainment, extremely brief speeches and some very odd categories. (Best stage technician?) Coaxing potential audiences, especially out-of-town ones, to see a Broadway show was not on the agenda, and television itself, blurry and black-and-white, was no competition anyway. The point was merely to honor the honorees.Now we accept that the Tonys are an industry marketing tool, the honorees merely bait.That can be fun, and even powerful, when staged with the wit and intelligence that the best musicals apply to the uneasy relationship between art and commerce. In recent years, numbers from “Fun Home” (2015) and “The Band’s Visit” (2018) were so beautifully conceived for the camera — largely by their original directors, Sam Gold and David Cromer — that without any loss of seriousness or subtlety they demonstrated why people might want to see the shows in the first place.And with enough savvy, even a crushing loss could be expressed in prime time, as when students who survived the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School sang “Seasons of Love” from “Rent” on that year’s telecast.But for the most part, recent musicals appear in a poor light compared to the classics of past Tonys, not because they are necessarily worse but because the old telecasts often cushioned their selections in context and let you get to know their characters. Plays have it even worse: They are barely permitted to present themselves at all. “Choir Boy,” in 2019, was the exception that proved the rule, intercutting spoken elements of its story with a thrilling version of “Rockin’ Jerusalem.”Finally, at the bottom of the pecking order, come the artists, starting with leading actors, then supporting actors, then directors, choreographers, composers, book writers, designers and, well, does anyone remember the last time we got to hear an orchestrator say more than four words on television?All of this can be improved in a split show. With its increased total time of four hours — and especially this year, with fewer categories and nominees than usual — the ceremony can honor the plays with meaningful excerpts, and the people who actually make the work with recorded segments that help us see what they do. The entertainment segment can likewise be given more time to breathe, allowing drop-dead production numbers and quieter, more intimate moments to create a rhythm more like the experience you actually get on Broadway.And if the Tonys would deign to take some pointers from the creators of the Antonyo awards, which in the worst of the pandemic managed to honor Black theater artists with dignity and warmth — or for that matter, this year’s surprising Grammys — they might remember that what they’re trying to promote, especially now, is human connection. The smarmy introductions and whirligig graphics and general aura of hectic oversell could be replaced with a more confident statement of what theater, at its best, has been and can be.Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas sang a moving rendition of “Seasons of Love” from “Rent” at the Tonys ceremony in 2018.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times ORG XMIT: FSTI’m afraid that means some drastic changes. First, let’s get rid of hosts whose Broadway cred comes mostly from untutored enthusiasm and the wishful thinking that they might boost ratings. (It never works; for years, the show has drawn only 6 million to 8 million viewers no matter what — and recently even fewer.) Homegrown talent — Billy Porter? Meryl Streep? — will do nicely, thanks.And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the overcaffeinated television directors, editing as if to induce convulsions and framing all scenes as if they were sitcoms. Recent highlights have repeatedly shown what should be obvious: Theater directors make the best televised theater.Not that Broadway’s identity crisis is going anywhere, even if we achieve the Best Tonys Ever. But to get to a healthier, more entertaining place, the American Theater Wing and the Broadway League, the organizations that present the event, have to stop favoring the commercial side so fawningly. Producers of individual shows should not be allowed to shape any content but their own; otherwise, the telecast winds up being hijacked by beamed-in celebrities singing songs from terrible musicals no one’s yet seen.And as for those stage-swarming investors? Let’s ban them too. The awards they bogart belong to the authors.In other words, let the artists be in charge. Money may talk, but it doesn’t sing. More