Tony, Tony, Tony!

In honor of this week’s Tony Awards, let’s take a look at filmed live musicals that have been nominated for, and won, the coveted awards. To be eligible for a Tony Award, amongst other set criteria, a musical needs to have been performed on Broadway, a theatre house with at least 500 seats located within the Theatre District and Lincoln Center in midtown, New York City.

Of the 131 musicals currently in the database, 25 were filmed live on Broadway. 24 of these filmed live Broadway musicals were nominated for at least 1 Tony Award, and 15 won at least 1 award. Allegiance is currently the only filmed live Broadway musical to have received zero Tony nominations. Victor/Victoria received a nomination for Best Actress in a Musical, however Julie Andrews turned it down, as she felt it was unfair that her team had not also been recognized for their work.

Nearly all of the Tony Award nominated filmed live musicals received a nomination in an acting category, but only 6 received the award — Contact, South Pacific, Into the Woods, Light in the Piazza, RENT, and Sophisticated Ladies. This means when we’re watching a filmed live Broadway musical, we’re not very likely to be watching Tony award winning performances.

When it comes to design, the majority of filmed live musicals to be nominated in Best Scenic Design and Best Lighting Design won their awards, while just under half won for those nominated for Best Costume Design won that award. Sunday in the Park with George, The Will Rogers Follies, The Light in the Piazza and South Pacific received the most Tony Awards for design.

​Just 14 filmed live musicals have been nominated for Best Musical, and 5 have won, including Contact, The Will Rogers Follies, RENT, Fosse, and Memphis. 

With 11 nominations, The Will Rogers Follies and The Light in the Piazza had the highest number of nominations. Sunday in the Park with George, Pacific Overtures, and RENT each had 10 Tony nominations, followed by Into the Woods and South Pacific with 9, Fosse, She Loves Me, Memphis, Shrek, Sophisticated Ladies with 8, Legally Blonde, Passing Strange, Smokey Joe’s, Contact and South Pacific with 7, and Falsettos with 5 nominations.

When you consider the hundreds of musicals that have been nominated over the course of the Tony Awards’ 72 year history, it is easy to see that very few Tony Award nominated and winning musicals have been legally filmed live for public consumption. 

Broadway is an immensely influentially and highly coveted corner of the musical theatre world. Despite this, Broadway is inaccessible to millions of people around the world due to cost and, importantly, geography. This year’s Tony Awards broadcast worked to include some of those Broadway lovers around the world with the initiative #TonyDreaming. On Twitter, I wrote that filmed live musicals are an amazing way to help fuel the dreams of aspiring thespians.

You know what else helps fuel the dreams of aspiring thespians? FILMING LIVE STAGE SHOWS AND MAKING THEM WIDELY AVAILABLE. #TonyDreaming #TonyAwards

— Filmed Live Musicals (@filmedliveMT) June 11, 2018

What better way to reach out to millions of theatre lovers, aspiring actors, technicians, writers, and directors than by making legally filmed high quality captures of Broadway shows available to those people? Yes, the New York Public Library Theatre on Film and Tape Archive exists, but it is only available to people who live in New York, and each capture is only available to view once. 

We have come to expect cast recordings as normal for Broadway shows, I dream of the day when filmed live recordings are also a standard occurrence. As I looked at in a previous post, filmed live releases of Broadway shows do not negatively affect ticket sales. It doesn’t mean a filmed live recording needs to be released on opening night, or that every single musical should be recorded, but there is a hunger for Broadway, and we need a better solution to combat bootlegs. 

Of the 25 filmed live Broadway shows currently in the database, 20 are available to view, either in the cinema, on DVD, or online. As shown below, you can use the database to search for musicals and learn more about where to watch them.

​The great thing about filmed live musicals is that they are not limited to Broadway. Several Broadway productions have been filmed whilst on tour, such as the original production of Sweeney Todd or more recently, Disney’s stage version of Newsies. The database has plenty of musicals such as An American in Paris, Billy Elliot, and The Phantom of the Opera which have played on Broadway, but have been staged elsewhere and filmed live for public consumption.

From this year’s Tony batch, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Live from Lincoln Center will film the gorgeous revival of My Fair Lady, and the capture of Once on This Island’s Tony Awards performance demonstrates that theatre in the round is ready to be filmed live. With Daddy Long Legs producer Ken Davenport at the helm, perhaps we will have another Tony Award winning revival to view on screen. Given that all the nominations for Best Musical were all based on movies, we can hope that filmed live musical versions of those musicals will also be possibilities.

Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees and winners, and let’s hope we will see more of them filmed live and available on a screen near us soon! ​​​