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      Broadway’s Tony Awards, Delayed by Pandemic, Set for September

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      Most of the prizes will be announced on the Paramount+ streaming service, followed by a starry concert celebrating Broadway on CBS television.The long-delayed Tony Awards, honoring the last set of shows to open on Broadway before theaters went dark, finally have a plan: The ceremony will take place on Sept. 26, timed to bolster a pandemic-hobbled industry as shows begin to reopen.Three of the 25 competitive awards — best musical, best play and best play revival — will be presented live during a television program, broadcast on CBS, that will primarily be a starry concert of theater songs. But the bulk of the awards, honoring performers, writers, directors, choreographers and designers, will be given out just beforehand, during a ceremony that will be shown only on Paramount+, the ViacomCBS subscription streaming service.The organizers’ current expectation is that the event — awards and performances — will be live and in-person, taking place inside a Broadway theater.The three jukebox shows vying for best musical — “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” — will each be invited to perform on the television broadcast. Many details — like which theater will be used, whether there will be a host, and who will perform — have not been determined.The two-platform structure, running a total of four hours, was arrived at during lengthy negotiations between the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing — the two organizations that present the awards — and CBS, which has broadcast the ceremony since 1978. CBS pushed to emphasize entertainment value, particularly in a year when viewership has plunged for many awards shows; the theater organizations wanted a way to honor the artistry of the abbreviated 2019-2020 season.“The ground was shifting under our feet the entire time, but our goal was to get as much celebration of the community and all the nominees as possible,” said the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin.In a joint interview, St. Martin and the Theater Wing’s chief executive, Heather Hitchens, said they were pleased with the outcome.“Everybody wanted to create something that would celebrate the community, help sell tickets and be appealing to a national audience,” Hitchens said. “There were really good, thorough and passionate discussions about how best to achieve those three things.”They noted that it has been years since all Tony Awards categories were viewable nationally. For six years, starting in 1997, some of the awards were presented on a PBS special that would air just before the CBS broadcast, but in recent years, many of the design and writing awards have been presented off the air.“One of the things we’re proudest of is we got Paramount+ for all of our awardees, and the celebration of these awards on a major platform is a huge achievement,” Hitchens said. “That’s something we’ve wanted for years.”The broadcast segment is being described in a news release as “a live concert event, featuring superstar Broadway entertainers and Tony Award winners reuniting onstage to perform beloved classics and celebrate the joy and magic of live theater.” Asked for more detail, Hitchens said, “It’s going to be jam-packed with entertainment that is about Broadway. More to come on that.”The two-platform plan is similar to that used by the Grammy Awards, at which the majority of the prizes are announced at a preshow ceremony, followed by an entertainment-focused television broadcast. Some of the Tony Award winners named during the streaming ceremony will also be acknowledged during the TV portion.The ceremony, originally scheduled for June 7, 2020, will take place in September as part of an effort to reinforce the marketing message that Broadway is back in business — in fact, the show is being titled “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back!” Broadway’s 41 theaters have been closed since March 12, 2020; at the moment, the first show planning performances is “Hadestown,” on Sept. 2, followed by “Chicago,” “Hamilton,” “Lackawanna Blues,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” on Sept. 14 and at least two dozen more over the fall and winter.“To have tickets on sale, to have shows announcing their openings, and to have an announcement about the Tony Awards, feels exhilarating, and hopeful,” St. Martin said.This year’s awards ceremony — formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards — will be the 74th such event and will recognize work performed on Broadway between April 26, 2019, and Feb. 19, 2020. The Tony Awards retroactively set that eligibility deadline after determining that too few voters had seen a revival of “West Side Story” and a new musical called “Girl From the North Country” that opened in the final weeks before the pandemic arrived; those shows are expected to be eligible to compete for awards next year.The nominations for this year’s ceremony were announced last October; 15 shows managed to score a nod.The five contenders for best play are “Grand Horizons,” by Bess Wohl; “The Inheritance,” by Matthew López; “Sea Wall/A Life,” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne; “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris; and “The Sound Inside,” by Adam Rapp.The winners have already been determined, although the results are unknown: the 778 Tony voters — producers, performers, directors, designers and others associated with the industry — were invited to cast their ballots, electronically, in early March. The results have since been safeguarded by the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.The streaming portion of the Sept. 26 Tony Awards ceremony is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Eastern; the broadcast show, which can also be streamed live and on demand on Paramount+ and the CBS app, is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern. As in years past, the Tony Awards show will be put together by the producers Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss of White Cherry Entertainment; Weiss will be the show’s director. More

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      Broadway Restart Accelerates as ‘Hadestown’ Plans Its Return

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      This Tony Award-winning musical has chosen the earliest reopening date of any thus far: The curtain is to go up on Sept. 2.“Hadestown,” the last show to win a Tony Award for best musical before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the theater industry, announced Monday that it is planning to resume performances on Sept. 2, nearly two weeks before any other Broadway shows have set their reopening date.The show’s producers said they had consulted with the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo as well as the Broadway League on their plan. They said tickets would go on sale June 11.“One of the themes of the show is imagining how the world could be, and we think it’s important to bring that hope and optimism to Broadway in this moment,” said Mara Isaacs, one of the show’s lead producers. She said that “Hadestown” wanted to open in early September for logistical reasons — the creative team is juggling the Broadway reopening with a new production in Korea and a North American tour — but also because “we felt we had a responsibility to get people back to work as quickly as possible.”Broadway’s 41 theaters have been closed since March 12, 2020, and until now the earliest resumption date has been Sept. 14, a date chosen by three juggernauts, “Wicked,” “The Lion King” and “Hamilton,” for a group reopening. Two other shows, the long-running revival of “Chicago” and “Lackawanna Blues,” a solo play by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, are also planning to start performances that night.It is possible that plans by “Hadestown” to start earlier will prompt other producers in New York to reconsider their own scheduling. Virus-related restrictions in the city have been easing in recent weeks, although it remains unclear when the tourist market that has in recent years been a key part of the Broadway economy will rebound.Isaacs said she would be fine if other shows opted to open early as well. “This is not about being first,” she said. “Every producer has to look at what is in the best interests of their show.”“Hadestown,” written by the singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, is a contemporary adaptation of the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The musical won eight Tony Awards, including the best musical prize, as well as one for Mitchell’s score, and one for the director, Rachel Chavkin.The show began performances in the spring of 2019, and had been seen by 371,000 people before the shutdown; the producers said they believe there remains a large potential audience in Greater New York of theater lovers who had not seen “Hadestown” before the pandemic, as well as a base of superfans who are eager to see it again.Twenty-seven shows have now announced dates during the 2021-22 Broadway season. Among them: “Girl from the North Country,” a musical featuring the songs of Bob Dylan that opened just a week before theaters shut down. The producers of that musical said Monday, which is Dylan’s 80th birthday, that they would resume performances Oct. 13.Broadway producers are planning to open their shows at full capacity, meaning no social distancing, and with mandatory masks, although it is unclear how changing conditions in the country might affect that. Thus far no shows are planning to require patrons to show proof of vaccination, but “Hamilton” has said it expects to mandate vaccinations for cast and crew.The “Hadestown” announcement advises that “protocols may include mask enforcement, increased cleaning and ventilation/filtration enhancements, vaccination or negative test verification.” Isaacs said it was too soon to be more specific.“If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that things will likely change between now and when we reopen, so it’s not smart to make a decision today about what protocols will be required in September,” she said. “We will do whatever science and public health officials tell us is appropriate.” More

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      Cultural Institutions Still Waiting for $16 Billion in Federal Aid

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      The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program has been marred by delays, but officials say some applicants could learn next week if they have been approved for aid.Five months after Congress approved a $16 billion federal aid program to help live performance venues and cultural institutions survive the pandemic, more than 12,000 applicants have sought help but no money has been disbursed yet.But some venue owners, theater producers and museum officials — eager, and in cases desperate, for financial help after more than a year of steep pandemic losses — could soon learn if help is on the way. The Small Business Administration, which runs the program, said in a statement Friday that the highest-priority applicants — those that lost 90 percent of their revenue compared to the prior year — are tentatively scheduled to receive notices about the fate of their applications beginning next week.But some business owners are wary of the promise after weeks of delay and confusion over the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which many had cheered as a lifeline. Each day applicants vent their frustrations on an online forum, regularly polling one another on whether any applications have yet been officially approved or rejected.“They’re hanging on by a thread right now,” said Meredith Lynsey Schade, a theater producer and nonprofit leader who helps answer questions from grant applicants on the forum. “They’re on life support, and every day they’re told, ‘just a little bit longer.’”At a news conference on Friday in Times Square, not far from the TKTS booth that sells discounted Broadway tickets, Senator Chuck Schumer and Broadway industry leaders celebrated the program as a savior for the hard-hit performing arts sector.“Right now $16 billion is on the way to the theater district, our theater industry, our live venues and our cultural institutions in New York and across the country,” Senator Schumer said. He did not address the delays that have hampered the application process or the frustrations of those awaiting relief.In response to a question about the program’s persistent delays, a spokesman for Senator Schumer, Angelo Roefaro, said “We are urging an ASAP release of these federal dollars.”Senator Chuck Schumer spoke about the promised aid at a news conference on Friday with Broadway officials and performers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNow that more theaters, concert halls and nightclubs are getting the green light to reopen across the country, new expenses are starting to mount, even as organizations try to figure out how to handle the losses of the past year.Forty Broadway shows are expected to open during the 2021-22 season, Mr. Schumer said at the news conference, some of them as early as September. In recent days, tickets have gone on sale for 19 shows, he said.Grant applications from live venue operators or promoters make up more than 40 percent of the 12,213 funding applications that were submitted as of earlier this week, according to data from the Small Business Association; theatrical producers make up about 7 percent of that total. The program offers grants worth 45 percent of applicants’ prepandemic gross earned annual revenue, up to $10 million.As Broadway shows prepare for reopenings beginning in September, producers and theater owners are among the applicants waiting anxiously for funding. Broadway applicants will most likely be considered in the highest priority window to receive the grant funds because they generally lost the vast majority of their revenue when theaters shut down, said Ms. Schade, who was a producer on two Broadway shows that were running at the start of the shutdown, “Hadestown” and “The Inheritance.”Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said in an interview that the Small Business Administration had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of the month, and that the industry understands “how government works.” Ms. St. Martin said that the agency had to take some time to familiarize itself with the Broadway industry.“If we don’t get some money soon I may have different things to say,” she said, “but I think they’re being extremely cooperative and supportive of our industry and trying to learn it while also handing out money.”The application process for the grant money has been chaotic from the start: On what was supposed to have been day one for people to submit applications, the online system broke down and the agency’s inspector general sent out an alert warning of “serious concerns” with the program’s waste and fraud controls.In its statement on Friday, the Small Business Administration acknowledged that there continues to be “some fine-tuning of technical components of the program” but said the agency is “committed to quickly and efficiently” disbursing funds to venues and organizations in need. More

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      Tony Awards Voting Starts Now. And It’s Going to Be Weird.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Awards Voting Starts Now. And It’s Going to Be Weird.No shows are playing, and no one knows when they will come back. Here are answers to six questions about a process even more idiosyncratic than usual.Adrienne Warren as the title character in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” one of three shows eligible for the best musical Tony Award.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMarch 1, 2021The last Broadway season ended, unexpectedly, nearly a year ago. The next one will begin who-knows-when.But deep in this winter of our theaterlessness, a dormant tradition is starting to stir: the Tony Awards.Hundreds of voters, this week and next, are casting ballots for the best shows, and the best performances, of a theater season abruptly cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.The jukebox shows “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical’ are competing for best musical, and hope to resume performances whenever Broadway reopens. All five of the best play contenders have closed. They are “Grand Horizons,” by Bess Wohl; “The Inheritance,” by Matthew López; “Sea Wall/A Life,” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne; “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris; and “The Sound Inside,” by Adam Rapp.In this strangest-of-all Tony competitions, the voting is disconnected from both the period being assessed, which ran from April 26, 2019, to Feb. 19, 2020, and the ceremony for handing out awards, which has not yet been scheduled.In other words, we won’t know the results until — well, for a long time.But here’s what we do know:Who’s going to vote?Not a lot of people.There are 778 Tony voters, but they can only cast ballots in categories in which they’ve seen all the nominees. Because the pandemic prevented any spring theatergoing, there are fewer qualified voters than usual.There are 25 prize categories; the Tonys won’t say how many people will actually be able to vote in each category, but producers believe slightly fewer than 400 people will qualify to cast ballots for best musical, and fewer than that for best play.What’s missing?Parties.The usual Tonys season is all-encompassing. Shows that opened in the fall (and that would have included all three of last season’s nominated musicals) invite voters back to see them again. Monday nights are jammed with nonprofit galas at which nominees mingle with voters, and those who can sing, do. There are press junkets and mixers; display ads in The New York Times and caricatures at Sardi’s; plus, of course, a raft of spring openings to catch up with.So much hugging. So much schmoozing. So many four-hour dinners. Everyone complains. And now they long for it.“I can’t believe I miss buffets,” said Eva Price, a lead producer of “Jagged Little Pill.” “So much that we took for granted, and sometimes grimaced at, we would give our left arms for right now.”Lauren Patten, center, in “Jagged Little Pill,” a show that re-aired a cast reunion concert as a way to remind voters and fans that it plans to return to Broadway.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIs it appropriate to campaign?Yes, but very gingerly.We’re still in the middle of a devastating pandemic and a huge number of people who work in theater are currently unemployed. Also: money is tight because there are no ticket sales.“The 2020 shows can’t run a campaign in the usual way, and even if we could it would feel icky to try,” said Carmen Pavlovic, the lead producer of “Moulin Rouge!”“This is not a moment for cocktail parties and gossip,” she added. “It’s just a moment for lifting up artists from darkness, and hoping that lifts everybody else along the way.”So swag is minimal. “Moulin Rouge!” and “Jagged Little Pill” sent voters coffee table books about their shows, but that’s about it. The main form of campaigning this year is in the form of “For Your Consideration” emails.The nominated show that is furthest in the rearview mirror — a revival of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which closed in July 2019 — sent voters a video montage of interviews including its playwright, Terrence McNally, who died eight months later from complications of the coronavirus.Nominees are sitting for profiles with theater trade publications. And last week, “Tina,” “Jagged Little Pill,” “The Inheritance,” “Slave Play” and “Betrayal” bought daily sponsorships of Broadway Briefing, an emailed industry newsletter whose subscribers include many Tony voters.And there are other, newfangled ways to refresh voters’ memories. “Betrayal” on Sunday held a cast reunion on Instagram Live; “The Sound Inside” sent voters videotaped selections from the production; “Jagged Little Pill” released a video reflecting on the year and is re-airing a concert version of its show. “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Inheritance” built voter web pages with performance clips, interviews, scripts and more.The message needs to be focused, producers say. “We have to be very mindful and respectful of what people’s experiences are right now,” said Tali Pelman, the lead producer of “Tina.” At the same time, she said, “Honoring our talent and their contribution is important. More than ever, we have to shout out about their exceptional value in society.”What happens when the votes are tallied?An accounting firm sits on the results.The voting period runs through March 15, with votes cast electronically via a password-protected website, and tabulated by Deloitte & Touche LLP. Even in pre-pandemic years, results are not shared with the leaders of the organizations that present the awards — the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing — or anyone else before they are announced.This year they will just be kept secret for longer than usual.Aaron Tveit (with Karen Olivo, in “Moulin Rouge!”) is the only actor eligible for best actor in a musical.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCan you lose if you’re the only nominee?Theoretically, yes.Aaron Tveit of “Moulin Rouge!” is the only person nominated as best actor in a musical. This is an unusual circumstance, for which the Tonys have imposed an unusual rule: to win, Tveit must get a positive vote from 60 percent of those who cast ballots. But, to be clear, he’s likely to pick up his first statuette this year.There are a couple of other nomination quirks, too. There will be no prize for best musical revival, because the only one that managed to open, “West Side Story,” did so after the retroactively imposed eligibility date. And the contenders for best score were all from plays.So when will we know the winners?Stay tuned.It seems clear that the ceremony will only take place after live performance is allowed to resume in New York and tickets to Broadway shows have gone on sale.That’s because the industry’s priority will be to use the ceremony to remind potential audiences that Broadway is back. The goal, said Heather A. Hitchens, the Wing’s president and chief executive, “is to be most helpful to the industry.”Several producers and publicists say they are now thinking the most likely time frame is after Labor Day, a full year and a half after Broadway shut down.The organizers have shared a few other details. This year’s ceremony, like those before the pandemic, will be overseen by Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner. There will be some noncompetitive awards (those are honors like lifetime achievement). But there has been no announcement about whether the ceremony will be in-person or virtual, televised or streamed, live or taped; only that it will take place “in coordination with the reopening of Broadway.”“We hope to have news very soon,” said the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Tonys Voting is Coming Soon. The Awards? We Still Don’t Know.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTonys Voting is Coming Soon. The Awards? We Still Don’t Know.Organizers of the ceremony have firmed up dates for selecting favorites, but won’t commit to an event until plans for Broadway’s return are set.Elizabeth Stanley, center, in the musical “Jagged Little Pill,” which was nominated for 15 Tony Awards, the most of any show in the abbreviated 2019-20 season.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJan. 29, 2021The question has preoccupied Broadway lovers for months: When are the Tony Awards?On Friday, the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, the two organizations that oversee the awards, took a step toward clarifying their latest thinking.They said two things: One, the much-delayed awards will be scheduled “in coordination with the reopening of Broadway.” And two, the voting will take place from March 1 to March 15.What does that mean? It means, first, that the process is moving forward. The 784 (give or take a few) voters will be soon able to cast ballots for the best work of the season that began in April 2019 and ended, prematurely, in February 2020. (Theaters were open until mid-March, but Tony administrators decided only shows that opened by Feb. 19 would be eligible for awards because too few voters had seen those that opened later.)The voters will be choosing among a group of nominees announced last October. The best musical nominees are “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” and the best play nominees are “Grand Horizons,” “The Inheritance,” “Sea Wall/A Life,” “Slave Play” and “The Sound Inside.”It also makes official what has become increasingly apparent: the ceremony will look forward, toward the 2021-22 season, as much as it looks backward, to the 2019-20 season. The coronavirus pandemic has scuttled a 2020-21 season.The ceremony, which is typically aired on network television, looks likely to promote the return of Broadway, and the presenters are not committing to a date because they don’t know when reopening will happen. Many producers are currently hoping for September, in which case a ceremony could take place in June, but throughout the pandemic many such predictions have come and gone.The Tonys were originally scheduled to take place last June.As was true the last time voting took place, in the spring of 2019, all voting will be electronic, and the voters, who are mostly producers, presenters, and people who work in the theater industry, can only vote in categories in which they have seen all the nominees. A subset of voters are allowed to vote in the categories of best orchestrations and best sound design, because those categories have been deemed too specialized for the full pool of voters to decide.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More