NYT: A Chance To Fix The Tonys

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.

Now 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?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/theater/tony-awards-broadway-fix.html

They can honor the plays by awarding the playwrights with a category of their own. That'll keep the investors off the stage for once.

That "hideous scrum of investors" are the whole reason the show is on Broadway in the first place. I cannot tell you how many shows I've worked on that were DEFINITELY "going to Broadway" and not a single damn one of them has ever come anywhere close. And why? They all, every single one of them, could not raise the money.

The one thing that separates a Broadway show from any other is that somebody paid for it to open. That "hideous scrum" capitalized the paychecks for every single person working on that show. If getting to be part of a mob that goes up onstage on TV to get an award (that you have to pay for yourself) pries money out of the wallets of people, great! Wonderful! Every one of that "hideous scrum" used their own money to make a Broadway show happen and if it wins a Best Of The Season Award, they are fully entitled to share in the glory they made happen.

If anyone can come up with a way to produce a Broadway show that does not require a "hideous scrum" of people writing checks, I'd love to hear it.

The problem is the "hideous scrum" are setting the agenda for what gets seen. Yes, it is lovely that they do that, but who made them the arbiter of visibility. They are usually old and usually white. That is the long time argument that has been re-ignited by the current unrest in the country. Karen Olivo's statement of creating new theatre landscapes refers to this.

There is a ton of horrible work that makes it to Broadway due to who people know. It's privilege and class and has nothing to do with merit. If you look at Manhattan Theatre Club you have a shining example of old money putting up awful new plays. Every new play by Greenberg or McNally didn't need a Broadway debut.

The hideous scrum need some education on systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia in the theatre world and ways to use their resources to create access for the oppressed to develop their work when it is exceptional enough for Broadway.