Tony Awards

Tony Awards - Recognising Achievement in Broadway Stage and Musicals

First staged in 1947 (as the Antoinette Perry Award), the Tony® Awards have grown into one of the most famous and prestigious theatre awards in the world. The annual awards ceremony is now screened nationally on CBS across the USA in a three-hour broadcast. So how did a provincial theatre award - in the narrowest definition of 'provincial', as applying to a specific part of a country - become one of the world's leading theatre honours?

The first awards ceremony, in 1947, was produced and hosted by the American Theater Wing and the awards were named after this group's recently deceased former leader, Antoinette Perry. For these first few ceremonies the winners were awarded a scroll along with a small gift. In 1949 the first Tony medallions were produced as awards following a contest sponsored by the designers' union, United Scenic Artists. The winning design was a disk-shaped medallion featuring the masks of comedy and tragedy on one side and the profile of Antoinette Perry on the reverse. This design, Herman Rosse, is still used for the current Tony® Award medallions, though the contemporary version is mounted on a black pedestal with a curved armature. The medallions are now numbered (for tracking purposes) and engraved with the winner's name following the awards ceremony.

For the first two decades of the Tony® Awards the awards ceremony was staged in the ballrooms of New York hotels such as the Plaza, the Waldorf Astoria, and the Hotel Astor. These events were broadcast on WOR radio and, from 1956, on local television in New York. In 1967 the American Theatre Wing invited the League of American Theatres and Producers, Inc. - then known as the League of New York Theatres - to co-produce the awards. This same year was the first that the ceremony was broadcast on national television, and also signalled a change of venue from hotel ballroom to Broadway theatre. From this first national broadcast, a one-hour show from the Shubert Theater, the event developed under producer Alexander H. Cohen into one of the best awards programmes on television. Incorporating the award presentations along with live performances, the show developed a format that continues to work successfully. Since 2003, CBS - which has broadcast the show since 1978 - extended its coverage into a three-hour broadcast. The awards ceremony has been staged at Radio City Music Hall since 1997, as the 6,000 seater venue allows both cast and crew members of all nominated shows, along with members of the public, to attend the event.

The Tony® Awards are currently awarded in 25 categories, with the headline awards comprising: Best Play, Best Musical, Best Play Revival, Best Musical Revival, Best Actor, and Best Actress. They are awarded by a panel of approximately 700 judges from various areas of the industry and press. There are also three varieties of special honours that the Tony Awards Administration Committee may bestow on deserving individuals or institutions; these include regional theatre awards, lifetime achievement awards, and Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theater, which are awarded at a separate ceremony.