Video: Check Out James Earl Jones, Baayork Lee, and the Pre-Broadcast Acceptance Speeches

By: Jun. 11, 2017
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Before the Tony Awards broadcast began on CBS, the American Theatre Wing handed out a handful of Creative Arts Awards, along with the Lifetime Achievement and the Isabelle Stevenson Award. Check out all of the pre-broadcast acceptance speeches below.

The legendary James Earl Jones was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award and Baayork Lee was this year's recipient of the Isabelle Stevenson Award.

In 1957 James Earl Jones made his Broadway debut. Since that time he has performed on stage, television, and in films and continues to receive accolades from every corner of the entertainment industry. In addition to having won two Tony Awards for his work on Broadway in The Great White Hope and Fences, Jones has garnered much praise for more recent stage roles including those he performed in the Broadway productions of On Golden Pond, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Driving Miss Daisy, The Best Man, You Can't Take It With You, and The Gin Game.

Among his numerous and distinguished awards, Jones has received the National Medal of Arts, The John F. Kennedy Center Honor, and most recently in 2011, The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with an honorary Oscar.

Baayork Lee is the Founder of National Asian Artists Project (NAAP), which is a community of artists, educators, administrators, community leaders, and professionals who work to showcase the work of Asian-American theater artists through performance, educational programming and community outreach. Through NAAP, Lee orchestrates her vision of educating, cultivating, and stimulating audiences and artists of Asian descent. The organization has produced productions of musical theatre staples like OKLAHOMA!; CAROUSEL; HELLO, DOLLY!; OLIVER! and HONOR with all Asian-American casts. By turning a spot light onto the high-caliber talent of theatre artists of Asian descent, NAAP asserts, given the opportunity, the theatre and its audiences will embrace diverse American voices who strive to claim both new and classic American works as their own.



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