I’ve always loved the Tony Awards.
As a kid growing up in the Midwest it was one of the
few connections I had to Broadway. I was never really
that concerned with who received the awards. In several
cases I had no idea who the nominees were and even
if I did know them, there was no way to gauge who might
take home the statue. These people were being recognized
for work that took place over a thousand miles away
from me. And this son of a truck driver never had any
delusions that he might suddenly find himself in a
Broadway theatre watching a Tony celebrated performance.
No, I tuned in then for the same reason I tune in now – I
wanted to catch a glimpse of the new Broadway shows.
I loved the numbers from the musicals. I loved the
snippets from the plays. I loved the specially written
opening songs and dances; and the musical salutes to
theatre’s luminaries. If there was an actor or
actress doing their thing, I wanted to see it.
Oh sure, I watched the awards, and every now and then
was moved by an acceptance speech (Michael Jeter’s
comes to mind), but the awards always felt like filler
for the real show. The glitzy spectacle numbers, the
moving power ballads, the funny comedic turns and the
sometimes awkward and often out-of-context dramatic
scenes were what I lived for.
The whole idea of turning theatre into a competition
has always baffled me. The high school that I attended
was never involved in any of the dramatic competitions
that took place in our area, so I was never exposed
to that world. Perhaps I’d feel differently now
if I’d had that experience. But to try to quantify
someone’s ability to delve into a character or
to tell a story seems like trying to capture the wind
with a butterfly net.
The Tony Awards are a competition, regardless of the
fact that “the-powers-that-be” have tried
to down play the competition aspect. There hasn’t
been a Tony Award “winner” in years. Now
when the awards are bestowed they are always prefaced
with, “The Tony Award goes to…”,
as if what we are really witnessing is a reading of
a FedEx shipment manifest rather than the final decision
of a small group of Tony voters.
Judging artistic endeavors is a tricky deal no matter
the medium but at least for the Oscars, the Emmys,
the Grammys, etc. the voters can be certain that they
are each judging the same material because the performances
are frozen in time. With live theatre however there’s
no such guarantee. The performance that one Tony voter
sees on Tuesday night may be a completely different
performance from the one watched by a voter on Friday
night. Audiences may react differently, a prop may
malfunction, an understudy might be on and suddenly
the same words spoken three nights earlier might land
a completely different way. Not to mention the question
of how to compare the words and works of Neil Simon
to Tom Stoppard or David Mamet to William Shakespeare.
Nonetheless shows and performances are viewed, judged
and voted upon with one being deemed the best.
The sad part is that live theatre is fleeting. A performance
witnessed today is nothing but a memory once the curtain
falls. It’s also what makes watching live theatre
so exciting. The audience gets to feel that they are
part of an exclusive event. But to dub an exclusive
event the best of all exclusive events can be potentially
alienating.
That may be one of the reasons why the Tony Awards
telecast has always struggled for ratings. Unless the
viewer is a die-hard fan of Broadway, he or she probably
doesn’t know the performers, the shows or the
people on the creative side. And unlike the Oscars,
where a lot of the names and faces may also be unfamiliar
to the viewer, a simple trip to the local movie theatre
or video rental store won’t resolve the problem.
If you are a member of the general viewing public why
would you want to learn about an amazing performance
that’s taking place night after night in a theatre
over a thousand miles away when there is little chance
you’ll ever see it?
I don’t know the answer to that, probably because
I’ve never asked myself that question before.
I was like some beggar happy with whatever I could
get. It didn’t matter to me who won the awards
because in my book they were all winners - they got
to perform on Broadway. And I tuned in because watching
the Tony Awards made me feel that for a couple of hours
I was a part of Broadway too.
