Broadway’s Billion-Dollar Tony Night

The 78th Annual Tony Awards marked a record-breaking season in the history of Broadway. According to the Broadway League, this season brought in $1.89 billon in ticket sales. It even surpassed the pre-pandemic 2018-19 season, which took in $1.82 billion.

The Tonys have a storied beginning. Created in 1947 by the organization now called the American Theatre Wing, the idea was to celebrate excellence in the theater. And the Wing itself was founded by seven suffragists to provide war relief.

“We were the precursor to the USO and Stage Door Canteens,” says Heather Hitchens, president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing. In fact, the Wing operated the famed Stage Door Canteen in the basement of the 44th Street Theatre, where celebrities like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich volunteered by washing dishes, serving food or dancing with members of the armed forces.

Antoinette Perry, for whom the awards are named, was an actor, director and producer. A co-founder of the Theatre Wing of Allied Relief, which became the American Theatre Wing, Perry was, “kind of a character,” says Hitchens. “She played the horses and used her early earnings to support the American Theatre Wing.”

Perry passed away from a heart attack in 1946, when she was 58. The following year, on April 6, 1947, the Tony Awards debuted in the Waldorf Astoria’s Grand Ballroom. It moved to various locales around the city, from the Plaza Hotel to the Rainbow Room to the Shubert Theatre. By 1967, wishing to broadcast the ceremony, they joined forces with the Broadway League.“We said, we’ve created this award for the Broadway community,” says Hitchens. “So we decided to partner with the Broadway League for the community to work on it together.”

Much has changed since that first ceremony in 1946, when women received a compact and men got a money clip. Even the official soirée after the Tony’s ceremony at Radio City Music Hall is a pull-out-all-the-stops affair. After the CBS live broadcast at this year’s official Tony party guests filled MoMA to sip drinks from Dewar’s and tried to win Lababu keychains and TirTir beauty products from the amusement park style claw machine.

But aside from the box office, Broadway’s big night, hosted by Cynthia Erivo, also celebrated some record-breaking milestones. During the night’s riveting performance to honor it’s tenth year anniversary, as the song from Hamilton goes, “History is happening in Manhattan.”

Kara Young, who won Best Featured Actress in a Play for Purpose, is the first Black actor to win Tonys in consecutive seasons. The four-time Tony nominee, who won for her performance in Purlie Victorious last year, made history for her two wins in a row. Young, along with LaTanya Richardson Jackson, joined the show’s Broadway company after the production premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Young shared the deep sense of connectedness she felt with the Purpose artists.

“LaTanya Richardson Jackson, and myself were the newbies in this company,” said Young, who also added how playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins passionately worked on the play up until the last day of previews. “We were welcomed with open arms and by such warmth and love,” said Young. “Branden is one of the best writers that we have. It’s a testament to the artists at work.”

Wicked costume director Paul Tazewell, who won an Oscar earlier this year, took home the Tony for designing costumes for Death Becomes Her. Tazewell is the second person to win a Tony and Oscar in the same year. The last person to do so was Irene Sharaff in 1952.

And Francis Jue, who won Best Featured Actor in a play for Yellow face, became the second Asian American actor to win in a Tony. The first, BD Wong, won for M. Butterfly back in 1988, which like Yellow Face, was also written by David Henry Hwang.

In his moving acceptance speech, Jue shared that he was wearing a tuxedo that was a gift from the late actor Alvin Ing. “He had it made for himself for the opening of Pacific Overtures on Broadway in 1976, said Jue. “And when he gave it to me 20 years ago, he told me he wanted me to wear it when I accepted my Tony Award.”

Later on in the press room, Jue shared what it was like to meet and be inspired by Ing when they both performed in the Pacific Overtures Broadway revival. The show, from Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman, and Hugh Wheeler about Japan’s westernization, was the first musical Jue was taught in high school.

“Until then, it had never even occurred to me that people who looked like me could be in a musical. Let alone be the ones telling the story about whom the story revolved,” said Jue. “When I finally got to meet Alvin…he could not have been sweeter or more down to earth..”

Jue went on to explain that he was a “worker bee” who often got to choose the kind of projects he wished to take on. “It meant that I could be poor a lot of the time,” said Jue. “But that didn’t matter to me as long as I was only working on shows that were saying something that I wanted to say at any given moment…People like Alvin didn’t have that luxury all the time.”

From the red carpet the Tony nominees shared their reflections.

Kimberly Belflower on why she knew she had to write the play John Proctor is the Villain:

Kimberly Belflower: “In the wake of #MeToo, I was thinking a lot about my adolescence and young adulthood and feeling oh, I have a new vocabulary to name things for what they were that I didn’t have then. And I was reevaluating a lot of dynamics and relationships.

When I reread the Crucible in the wake of #MeToo, the John Proctor and Abigail relationship was so different than what I expected. It came to the forefront so immediately. I thought, this is similar to a relationships I’m reevaluating. I thought about how I was taught the Crucible and how we talk about it. Also, I wanted to write a play that was about female friendship at its core. The play is political but it’s also a love story about two best friends.”

Maybe Happy Ending Costume designer Clint Ramos

Clint Ramos: “Doing Maybe Happy Ending was exciting, but also felt like a puzzle. I thought, how do you present the future? And how do you dress robots? The magic of the musical is you have these two robots teaching us how to be human beings. So a lot of it was, how do we dress them so we know that they’re robots. But they’re also attempting to be human.”

Yellow Face playwright David Henry Hwang,

17 years after David Henry Hwang debuted Yellow Face, off-Broadway, the play returned for a Broadway run at the Roundabout Theatre Company. What was it like to revisit the play after all that time?

David Henry Hwang: It was satisfying to realize that this play that I wrote a long time ago actually felt more relevant now. It’s funnier now because these issues of what we now call DEI or woke are so much at the center of American popular discourse, for better or worse. But those are the things that fuel the comedy.

And one of the things I’ve realized in retrospect, which I sort of realized back then, was that I started writing the play when my dad fell ill. Then he passed away. Then it didn’t open until after he was gone. It’s what I used to sort of process losing my father. And I believe you see that in play.

James Monroe Iglehart on playing Louis Armstrong in A Wonderful World

James Monroe Iglehart spoke about the surprise of getting nominated for a Tony for the title role in A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical

James Monroe Iglehart: I was absolutely shocked. All I kept thinking was, I can’t believe this happened. I thought, they remembered us. And I’m so excited they did because my cast worked so hard. They worked their butts off on that stage. This was my dream to do this. I got to build a Broadway show for the first time in my life and loved every second of it.

What does Iglehart wish he could ask Louis Armstrong?

Iglehart: I would ask, “How did you deal with all of that negativity?” I’ve read about it and read his book. But to hear him talk about it would be incredible. What a brave and intelligent man and most talented guy in the world.

I would love to just talk to him. Also, being a married man, I would ask, “Now that you are married to your fourth wife, what did you learn? What can you teach me? So I don’t do those things.”

Gypsy’s choreographer Camille A. Brown on creating the“All I need Now Is The Girl?” number which manages to be both joyful and longing.

Camille A. Brown: “I’m really inspired by the dancers in the space. Kevin Csolak, [who plays Tulsa], is such a beautiful dancer. Director George C. Wolfe and I really wanted the essence of Gene Kelly. It’s not to say that Kevin or Tulsa is Gene Kelly—but it’s the idea, the muscularity of how he attacks movement. And I wanted the mix of jazz and tap in there.

Brunner: What was it like choreographing for Audra McDonald?

Brown: I’m always interested in hearing people’s opinions about the characters they play. We had conversations and I came up with gestures. I also talked to her about how she relates to her two daughters and the differences of one gesture. Or how we can all have the same gesture, but use them in different ways.

Maybe Happy Ending scenic designer and producer Dane Laffrey on what he would like people to take away from the musical?

Dane Laffrey: “I would love people to continue to be surprised by the show, even if it gets more attention and people know a little bit more about it…I think of how the story which can feel novel and far away is actually deeply universal and human. It’s about things that all people have to navigate and confront at various points in their lives.”

Julia Knitel, who plays several roles in the musical, Dead Outlaw, shares why a show about a 20th-century outlaw who got famous for his corpse, is more about how you want to live versus how you want to die.

Julia Knitel: “Inevitably, we are all going to die. A show like Dead Outlaw asks, how do you want to live? In this short time that we are given, how do you want to spend it?

I believe it’s why Dead Outlaw is a feel-good show. It really makes you want to hug your loved ones closer, or send that text that you been meaning to send, or tell someone you love them. Because life is short.”

Marjan Neshat, nominated for Best Featured Actress for English, on transferring the play from the Atlantic Theater Company off-broadway to Broadway
Marjan Neshat: In all honesty, I never really thought about doing Broadway. And truly, the way that our play was embraced—the fact that it didn’t really sacrifice any of its intimacy or its detail—made me want to do more and more.