Tony Awards (Theater Awards)

This year’s Tony Awards nominations, honoring work on Broadway as the industry tries to bounce back after the long coronavirus shutdown, are being announced at 9 a.m. Eastern today.The nominations will be announced by the actors Adrienne Warren (she won a Tony Award for portraying Tina Turner in “Tina”) and Joshua Henry (he’s a three-time Tony nominee, most recently for “Carousel”).We’ll have news and reaction throughout the day, and you can stream the announcement here.The Tony Awards, formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards, honor plays and musicals staged on Broadway. They are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing.The nominations were determined by a committee of 29 people who saw all of the eligible shows and then voted on Friday by secret ballot. The nominators are not allowed to have a financial interest in any of the eligible shows.This is the first Tony Awards for which shows that opened after the start of the coronavirus pandemic will be considered — all but one of the eligible shows opened after theaters reopened following the lengthy pandemic shutdown. (The exception — “Girl From the North Country” — actually opened in 2020, but theaters shut down so soon afterward that not enough Tony voters were able to see it for it to be considered during last year’s awards ceremony.)This year there are 34 shows vying for awards in 26 categories; to be eligible, the shows had to have opened between Feb. 20, 2020, and May 4, 2022. (Last year, there was a delayed Tony Awards ceremony honoring shows that opened during the abbreviated 2019-2020 theater season.)This year’s awards ceremony will take place on June 12 at Radio City Music Hall; a three-hour performance-heavy segment will be broadcast on television by CBS, preceded by a one-hour awards-focused segment streamed on Paramount+. The ceremony will be hosted by Ariana DeBose, who earlier this year won an Academy Award for “West Side Story.” More

From new shows like “MJ” and “A Strange Loop” to long-running Tony Award winners, our guide breaks down everything you need to navigate Broadway.Our guide offers an overview of the productions onstage now — including the bounty of comedies of all stripes this spring, from “POTUS” to “Plaza Suite” — along with some tips on planning your experience in a time of continued uncertainty, including how to buy tickets, for which refunds and exchanges are often possible, and navigating Covid-19 protocols. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES More

Here’s what to expect today:There were nine new musicals this season, and just five of them will be nominated for the best musical Tony Award, which is generally the prize with the biggest financial upside.Four of the best musical spots are likely to go to “A Strange Loop,” which is an outré metamusical about an aspiring writer making a musical about an aspiring writer making a musical; “Girl From the North Country,” which uses the songs of Bob Dylan to tell a story about a Depression-era boardinghouse; “MJ,” which is a biographical jukebox musical about Michael Jackson; and “Six,” which imagines the wives of Henry VIII competing at a pop concert. What else will be nominated? That is harder to predict; stay tuned.In the competition for best play, one contender looms especially large: “The Lehman Trilogy,” which is a sprawling exploration of the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers financial empire. This season was also noted for its historically high number of plays by Black writers, and watch for a few of them to score nominations, possibly including “Pass Over,” “Skeleton Crew” or “Clyde’s.” Also in contention: “Hangmen” and “The Minutes.”There were only four musical revivals this season, and three or four of them will score nominations. Two of them are sure to be included: “Caroline, or Change” and “Company.” The two others — “The Music Man” and “Funny Girl” — though selling more strongly, were not well reviewed by critics, and it is not clear which of them will get nominated (if the nominators are closely divided, it could be both).There were nine play revivals, many praised by critics. Among the best reviewed were “Trouble in Mind,” “How I Learned to Drive,” “For Colored Girls,” “American Buffalo” and “Take Me Out.” More

This year’s Tony Awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, June 12.The four-hour ceremony will take place at Radio City Music Hall. The first hour, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern, will be focused on awards, and will be streamed on Paramount+; the other three hours, which will be dominated by performance numbers, will be broadcast on CBS.The ceremony will be hosted by Ariana DeBose, an actress who earlier this year won an Academy Award for playing Anita in last year’s remake of “West Side Story.” DeBose has also appeared in six Broadway shows, and was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in “Summer — The Donna Summer Musical.” More

Once the nominations have been announced, the spotlight shifts to the voters.There are about 650 people who cast ballots for the Tony Awards, and most of them have some kind of stake in the theater industry: producers and performers, directors and designers, and even some journalists (though none from The New York Times, which views such involvement as a conflict of interest).The deadline for the voters to cast their ballots is Friday, June 10, just two days before the awards ceremony. The voting is electronic, and the voters are only supposed to vote in categories in which they have seen all the nominees.Between now and then there is a bit of campaigning. Shows often send voters scripts, or cast recordings, and sometimes a souvenir book or other form of promotional merchandise. And many of the nominees try to stay in the public eye during the voting period, by granting more interviews, performing at nonprofit galas, and presenting at theater-related conferences. More