NEW YORK, June 7 (BUS): At a Tony Award nominees lunch last month, veteran theater producer Ron Simmons looked around and smiled. It seemed fitting that the meeting took place in the Rainbow Room.
“I can guarantee you I haven’t seen so many people of color represented in all the categories of the Tony Awards,” he recalls. “It was a varied room. I was fascinated by it and liked it.”
For the first full season since the death of George Floyd, which has reignited a conversation about race and representation in America, Broadway responded with one of Tony’s most diverse lists to date, AP reports.
Several black performers were nominated in each performance category, including three out of five featured actors in a play, four out of six featured actresses in a play, two out of seven featured actors in a play and three out of five featured actresses in a play. There are 16 black performance gestures out of the 33 slots – a very healthy 48%.
For comparison, in the 2016 Tonys — the breakout season that included revivals of “Hamilton,” “Eclipsed,” and “The Color Purple” — 14 of the 40 acting nominees for plays and musicals or 35% were actors of color.
“Let’s hope the variety we’ve seen in the season continues to be the norm on Broadway, and that this isn’t just an anomaly or a flash in reaction to what we’ve been through, but just a reset,” said Lynn Notting. , the first writer to be nominated for both a play (“Clyde”) and a musical (“MG”) in a single season.
The new group of nominees also includes more women and people of color in the design categories, such as first-time nominees Palmer Hefferan for sound design for theatrical (“The Skin of Our Teeth”), Yi Zhao for stage lighting design (“The Skin of Our Teeth”) and Sarafina Bush to design stage costumes (“for girls of color who have contemplated suicide/When the rainbow is enuf”).
Other firsts this season included L Morgan Lee with “A Strange Loop” becoming the first non-animated vocalist to be nominated for a Tony Award. Adam Rigg, the landscape designer for “The Skin of Our Teeth,” became the first to be nominated for his agenda, and Toby Marlowe, co-author of “Six,” was the first non-dual lyricist to be nominated.
Eleven artists—including Jaquel Spivey from “A Strange Loop,” Myles Frost from “MJ,” and Kara Young from “Clyde’s”—received the nod for their first Broadway performance and 10 designers received nominations for their Broadway debuts, as did creators like Bizarre Episode by playwright Michael R. Jackson and Paradise Square co-writer Christina Anderson.
“I’m really, really excited about all the new voices we’re hearing, all the new writers being cast on Broadway for the first time,” said AJ Shively, a nominated actor for “Paradise Square.” “I really hope this trend continues.”
Perhaps nowhere is diversity more evident than in the oldest play currently on Broadway. Director Sam Gould’s “Macbeth” has a black lady Macbeth in Ruth Negga, a woman who plays the traditional man (Amber Gray plays Banquo), a non-binary actor (Asia Kate Dillon) and a disability actor (Michael Patrick Thornton).
“If all the world was a stage, our theater is definitely the world. Thornton, who uses his wheelchair as a cunning tool to play gentleman Lennox, says I am really proud to be there with all the cast.
But while acting has been seen all over Broadway this season, it’s been an invisible virus that doesn’t care. Various surges of COVID-19 have sickened the actors in waves and starved many of the box office of significant funds. The fickle theater-goers who returned often had an appetite for established comfort performances only.
Several black-led products appeared in a nutshell, including Ideas of a Colored Man, Chicken and Biscuits, and Swipe. They debuted in the fall, just as Broadway was slowly resuming and the audience was getting more and more apprehensive. Thoughts of a Colored Man was shut down early because it didn’t have enough healthy actors, and at one point the playwright enlisted himself to take to the stage and play a role.
One of the most haunting hits was the revival of Ntozake Shange’s song “For Girls of Color”, which struggled to find an audience. The cast of seven black women included deaf actor Alexandria Wales and, until recently, Knetta R. Miller, pregnant. It’s had Strong Notices and a whopping seven nominations for Tony. But it will be closed this week.
“In past seasons, if there had been a play with seven Tony nominations and this set of glowing ratings, the show would have gone on for so long,” says Simmons, lead producer. “There is an audience for this show. That is not the problem. The problem is getting the audience to the stage to see the show.”
Despite the abundance of inventory and insufficient consumers, there was a clear game-changer, such as “A Strange Loop,” a musical about a gay black playwright, which garnered 11 leading nominations, outpacing establishment choices like “The Music Man.” ” Broadway veterans agree that exceptional storytelling was available to those who purchased tickets.
Shapiro, who directed Tracy Letts’ Tony-nominated play “The Minutes,” which exposes the delusions in the dark heart of American history. “I am very impressed with the liveliness and vitality.”
Broadway data often indicate improvements in one year, then declines the next. Take on the 2013-14 season, which was rich with roles for African Americans, including “A Raisin in the Sun” starring Denzel Washington, Audra MacDonald, and Billie Holiday’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” and the dance show “After Midnight.” the night . “
There were also African Americans in unconventional roles, such as James Monroe Eaglehart as the Genie in “Aladdin”, and Nikki M. the opera.”
In that season, black actors represented 21% of all roles. But the following season, the number dropped to 9%.
Camille A. Brown, who this season with Liliana Blaine Cruz became the second and third black woman to be nominated for Best Direction in a Play, has survived ups and downs.
“The thing is, let’s see what next year looks like and the year after that and the year after that?” she says. “I think the landscape has definitely been a challenge, especially after George Floyd and the events that happened after that. But it’s only the first season after all of these things happened. So let’s see if it continues, continues to evolve and continues to progress.”
Simmons is optimistic about the earnings that will continue this year and celebrates, at least, that a host of diverse actors have earned Broadway credits this season. He’s expecting more Tony color winners than ever.
“Even though the box office hurt all our feelings, it’s really a celebration because we’ve never seen this kind of variety happen on Broadway,” he says. “It is a rare year and it is a rare year for both good and bad.”