Tony Awards Committee Announces 2 New Categories

[Julian2]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:31pm

"The Tony Awards Administration Committee met for the first time this season to vote on the addition of two new competitive categories for future Tony Awards ceremonies. The newly announced categories for which the upcoming season's productions will be eligible are Best Sound Design of a Play and Best Sound Design of a Musical. With the inclusion of these new categories, there will now be a total of 27 competitive categories for which qualifying productions will be in contention."
BWW Article

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:32pm

About ****ing time.

[Julian2]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:33pm

Sweet! Now all they need is an incidental music award!

Does anyone think Journey's End was the motivator for this? I kept hearing a lot about how wonderful their sound design was. Maybe only handing them one trophy Tony night made the commitee start thinking?

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:40pm

Excellent! Though I was also hoping for Best Original Score of a Play. But I'm thrilled about the addition of the Sound Design categories.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:42pm

So will they kill this one before they use it, too?

[B3TA07]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:42pm

Awesome.

[vfd88]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:45pm

I'd rather see Best Replacement.

What do you think would have won Best Sound Design (Musical) at this past season's Tonys?

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:47pm

way past due! very glad they have added these categories.

[Johnnytoc]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:50pm

Well this should be great! This should've been in place for a while.

[BroadwayGirl107]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:51pm

Rock on. Too bad this wasn't around this past year--the sound design for Journey's End was unreal.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:56pm

This year was the clincher, I'm sure. The sound design was brilliant and for shows like Coast of Utopia, Journey's End, Year of Magical Thinking, Grey Gardens, and even the annoying tennis ball in Deuce, to fall by the wayside is a crime.

[Becoz_i_knew_you21]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:56pm

Finally they make this category.

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 6:56pm

Cool. Hope it lasts longer than Best Replacement.

[MarkRascati]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 7:04pm

Haha I totaly didn't even notice there wasn't already a category on that... I would think that it would be basic

[BroadwayEnthusiast2]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 7:10pm

I'm glad they are starting it next year, because this year would just be another Tony for Spring Awakening.

[curly120]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 7:25pm

Why did they get rid of best replacement? Seems like it would have been a really good idea.

[gustof777]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 7:35pm

dammit! Journey's End could've gotten one more but yay for the category!

[emg_sound]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 7:46pm

As a possible future nominee (Once I finish grad school, of course!), I could not be happier!

As far as the statement about best incidental music for a play... that's 50% of sound design for straight plays!

As far as this year... the winners would have been Spring Awakening and Coast of Utopia (I did see Journey's End, and as much as I loved it, the complexity of Mark Bennett's score and design was far to powerful to be denied).

[jv92]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 8:28pm

It's about time.

[sondhead]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 8:34pm

I don't think they got rid of Best Replacement--just no one has been deemed worthy of a nominee yet. Correct me if im wrong.

And yay for sound design but seriously people-MUSIC DIRECTION. It's a HUGE part of the process and it gets NO recognition. Music Direction and Musical Supervision deserve awards.

[MarkRascati]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 8:49pm

The music director for Spring Awakening went to my school, so that would be pretty cool, yet I don't see that happening ever.

[vinnylin]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 9:06pm

"I don't think they got rid of Best Replacement--just no one has been deemed worthy of a nominee yet. Correct me if im wrong."

Actually, the replacement award category existed for only one year, and then they decided to get rid of it. You are correct, though, that they did not give the award that year.

In retrospect it was really a rather unworkable category that involved having a committee determine if someone was "worthy" of consideration, and then making the show available to voters to see the eligible performance. I believe that Jonathan Pryce (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) was quite upset that he was overlooked that year, and offending him contributed to the decision to nix the award category entirely.

Updated On: 6/19/07 at 09:06 PM

[TonyaFanatic]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 9:09pm

Best replacement was a cool category. They jus didnt want to do it. losers

[MungoGypsy8232]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 9:11pm

I'm happy, but I'm with the crowd who'd rather see the return of the Best Replacement.

[mikem]

Posted: 6/19/07 at 10:07pm

I seem to remember that our dear missing Margo mentioned a long time ago that Sound Design would be a tough Tony category to judge because almost every Broadway show has good sound design, and I think there is some truth to that. For those of us who have no knowledge of the technical side of sound design, it is very hard to judge differences between most shows, unless they have very obvious "special effects" (like Journey's End).