The Ensemblist

The 30th Annual Tony Awards were held at the Shubert Theatre, current home of A Chorus Line. As opposed to the usual June ceremonies we are used to, the ceremony took place in April 18, 1976 and broadcast by ABC television. The show featured six hosts, including Richard Burton and Jane Fonda It should be noted that while revivals of My Fair Lady and Hello, Dolly! (featuring Pearl Bailey) ran this season, there was no category for Best Revival or Best Revival of a Musical.

Heading into the April ceremony, the original productions of A Chorus Line and Chicago were virtually tied for nominations, with 12 and 11 respectively. Also nominated for Best Musical were Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures and a revue called Bubbling Brown Sugar. But the night went to A Chorus Line, winning 9 Awards, The awards for Set and Costume Designer going to Pacific Overtures and Chicago going home empty handed.

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Since March, we've been sharing stories of actors moving out of Broadway theaters - sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. But today we share a story from Natalie Charle Ellis, who as an original cast member of School of Rock and Beetlejuice moved out of the Winter Garden Theatre after five years in the building.

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The 58th Annual Tony Awards were held June 6, 2004 at Radio City Music Hall with Hugh Jackman as the host, also a nominee this year for portraying fellow Aussie Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. Leading the pack this year was Ozian juggernaut Wicked with 10 nominations, followed by six for Avenue Q, five for The Boy From Oz and six for Caroline, or Change. In a rare year where four productions were nominated for Best Revival of a Musical, a Roundabout Theatre Company production of Assassins led with seven, followed by six for Fiddler on the Roof, five for Wonderful Town and two for Big River. 

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Just after the 2020 Tony Award Nominations were announced, I chatted with Mary Dina (host of BPN's Page to Stage podcast) about our reactions to the nominees: our co-signs, surprises and snubs. 

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In this exploration of the history of musical theatre through one of its most effective devices, I wanted to bring along one of our artforms most knowledgeable and personable historians. Jennifer Ashley Tepper is a theatrical icon of her own, most notably for authoring her book series “The Untold Stories of Broadway.” But she’s also a proverbial vault of theatre history, recognizing the connective tissues of musical theatre in ways that others may not have seen before.

Jen’s statement about the line as a political function intrigued me. Sure, Soft Power is a musical about politics. But is the line itself a political act. So I went to the source, the woman who staged the line into Soft Power herself: Leigh Silverman, director of Soft Power.

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The 58th Annual Tony Awards were held June 6, 2004 at Radio City Music Hall with Hugh Jackman as the host, also a nominee this year for portraying fellow Aussie Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. Leading the pack this year was Ozian juggernaut Wicked with 10 nominations, followed by six for Avenue Q, five for The Boy From Oz and six for Caroline, or Change. In a rare year where four productions were nominated for Best Revival of a Musical, a Roundabout Theatre Company production of Assassins led with seven, followed by six for Fiddler on the Roof, five for Wonderful Town and two for Big River. 

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I’m not sure why this postponement of Broadway’s reopening stung more than the last time. On Friday morning, the Broadway League released a statement: “Ticket sales for Broadway performances in NYC are now suspended through May 30, 2021. Dates for each returning and new Broadway show will be announced as individual productions determine the performance schedules for their respective shows. The League will provide updates to the public as more information becomes available.”

When I started hearing rumblings of this announcement this night before, I began to text friends and colleagues asking if they had heard similar news about an impending announcement. With each person I checked in with, the reaction was similar: disheartened but not surprised. No one I knew really believed that the New York theatre industry would be back up and running by January, and yet to see it in print that there is at least another seven months ahead of this is just so sad.

I say “at least” because that’s all we know so far: not that performances will begin Tuesday, June 1st but that they could begin on June 1 at the earliest. It might be next Labor Day, or further into the future.

But like I said, it’s not just the lack of an end date to this “intermission” that is disappointing. It’s that much of this could have been prevented. With better leadership, better preparedness, more mandates, perhaps we could have been back in theatres by now. It wasn’t always inevitable that this shutdown would last more than a year, but now it is our sentence to wait.

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It was one of the most arresting - and uncomfortable moments I’ve experienced in the theatre in quite a long time. There I sat, in The Public’s Newman Theatre, watching a performance of the show Soft Power.

In the song, a reprise of a number called “Democracy,” the full company of actors comes down to the edge of the stage. There, standing shoulder to shoulder, 15 performers looked directly into the audience to recognize our presence in the space.

What is it about this line?! Why is it that, in an industry known for spectacle, does stillness provide the most arresting visual images. Why is that, in an artform full of Ziegfeld’s Follies and falling chandeliers, nothing is as effective as doing nothing?

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In the final installment of our series highlighting musicals from the fall 2019 season and their brilliant ensembles, we’re celebrating Jagged Little Pill. After a world premiere at Cambridge, Massachusetts’ American Repertory Theatre in 2018, Jagged Little Pill opened on Broadway on December 5, 2019. Adapted from Alanis Morrisette’s hit album of the same title, this musical features a diverse ensemble of individuals helping to bring the story of the Healy family to life.

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The 36th Annual Tony Awards were held on June 6, 1982 and hosted by Tony Randall. That season, there were a number of Broadway theatres being demolished to make way for the Marriott Marquis, so the theme of the telecast was to celebrate a great Broadway theatre at the home of that night’s celebration: the Imperial. Going into the Awards ceremony, Dreamgirls led the pack with 13 nominations, followed closely by 12 nominations for Nine. The original production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was nominated for seven awards, while the fourth contender, Pump Boys and Dinettes was nominated for just one. Only one musical was nominated for Best Revival, a Rex Harrison-led production of My Fair Lady.

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