NPH Trying To Get Play Performances Featured On The Tony Awards

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 12:07pm

YES!!! PLEASE START DOING THIS AGAIN!!!

[mikem]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 12:13pm

I think the play performances might work better this year than in past years. Other Desert Cities and Clybourne Park have lots of funny lines that don't need a lot of setup, Peter and the Starcatcher's miminalist staging would work, and Venus in Fur could also be excerpted well.

I think the big dramas like Coast of Utopia are harder to present well.

[showchoirguy]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 12:18pm

Please let this be true!

[bdn223]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 12:25pm

Catcher can do its mermaid number and I am sure Disney would foot the bill if it betters their slim chances since they are making a dollar off every ticket they sell, as well as all the merchandise.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if NPH does an opening number entitled "The Year of the Plusical" with Peter and the Starcatcher, End of the Rainbow, Masterclass, Alicia Keys for Stickfly, and One Man Two Guvnors all performing.

[dreaming]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 12:41pm

Yes, please let this happen!!!

[DEClarke]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 3:32pm

I'm game for that!

[dramamama611]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 4:19pm

Oh, this just beefs to become a reality.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 4:39pm

God, please, no!

I'm sure Harris means well, but I've been watching the Tony Awards for almost 50 years now and I've yet to see a scene from a play that didn't make me want to change the channel.

The excerpts are awkward, the actors rarely seem comfortable and if the point is to drum up support for plays, it has the opposite effect at my house.

It might be different if they extended the broadcast for an hour and each nominated play could perform a full, 10-minute scene; but we know that ain't gonna happen.

I wonder how many people who support this have already seen and enjoyed most of the plays in question? For you, a Tony Award repeat may be like viewing a snapshot from a wonderful vacation you took. For me, such a scene is like the "coming attraction preview" in a movie theater. Only usually not as clever and without the spectacle.

[Playbilly]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 7:17pm

I'm with Gaveston2. The play scenes just don't work on television as the Tony people have presented them. The introductions are always overwritten yet reductive of the plays, and the scenes themselves are deadly dull or overwrought. I can't imagine a scene from Peter and the Starcatcher that could work. the Mermaid song? It wouldn't entice anyone in and of itself, IMO. And, they always place the play scenes towards the end of the show, and kill any momentum.

Let's be realistic: the Tonys are basically a regional awards show. With a very distinctive audience as last year's NPH's opening number satirized. Unfortunately, the presentation always tries to "broaden" the audience. I'd rather have no play scenes shown than a poor display of good plays.

[jeffmiele]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 8:46pm

I feel the night is to celebrate the art. And a Broadway plays should be no less celebrated that night than Broadway musicals.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 8:49pm

Exactly. Plays make up just as much (if not more) of the season than musicals do and they make up NONE of what's represented on the telecast. It's high time they're shown more respect than they've gotten in e past however many years.

[jeffmiele]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 8:58pm

There's great footage on youtube of Jones performing the "I don't got to like you" scene from FENCES on the Tony's. I really don't see how any viewer would watch that and not agree that it was powerful. Also, something may catch the eye of a viewer who may not really be in to the art, it might not get them to a Broadway theater but potentially out to a theater somewhere and they could fall in love with it. What I'm getting at is anything can let someone get bitten by the theater bug, so why not put more opportunities out there? I try to see everything every year, usually miss about 5 productions, but I for sure enjoy plays a lot more than musicals, and I can't be the only one. I would definitely love to sit through just a few minutes of some shows again and have those minutes preserved for future audiences.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 9:02pm

And the argument that the performance "might" show off the production well is ridiculous since the same can be said about musicals. How many performances from nominated musicals are considered weak or just plain bad..

[Playbilly]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 9:04pm

I agree. But real respect would be to take them off of CBS and to someplace that could give the ceremony justice. As it is, that is not going to happen.

[Playbilly]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 9:06pm

Correction. When Les Moonves dies, it might get off of CBS.

[jeffmiele]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 9:08pm

If it were nominated for Best Play I could just imagine out funny it would be if GUVNORS had a spot and Corden was pulling some legends out of the audience for participation

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 9:59pm

jeff, I'll give you Jones in FENCES. So that's one example out of my half-century of Tony watching.

The point isn't that plays don't deserve the recognition, the point is that nobody has figured out how to do so in the time allotted so that the plays actually seem appealing.

Yes, Jordan, sometimes the musical numbers are horrendous, but a musical number is, in most musicals, a self-contained dramatic unit with a beginning, middle and an end. That presents much better in the context of an Awards show.

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 6/1/12 at 11:58pm

Playbilly - Why do you want it off of CBS? I really like the fact that it's on broadcast television as it has the potential to reach far more people and really gives the show some legitimacy. If it was stuck on a fringe network, many people may not get the channel in their homes and this could just be me but some channels just seem like very cheap operations. To be honest, no one's going to have the budget CBS does which can attract big names and actual hosts.

I have many issues with the Tonys but the network has never been one of them.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/2/12 at 5:05am

I've yet to see a scene from a play that didn't make me want to change the channel.

Except, of course, for this one, I hope!




1990 Tony Award Show: Tony Winner Dame Maggie Smith and Tony Winner Margaret Tyzack in the Tony-Nominated: LETTICE AND LOVAGE

Updated On: 6/2/12 at 05:05 AM

[Laurelei]

Posted: 6/2/12 at 5:58am

Thank you so much for this! :)

[AADA81]

Posted: 6/2/12 at 6:04am

Excerpts from scenes is something that is no longer familiar to most audiences, though during the early years of television it happened all the time. Variety shows had both musical and non-musical scenes from Broadway shows often, since Broadway entertainment was still central to American culture in those days.

I understand both arguments. Some of the more recent scenes I've seen have really fallen flat, but I'm sure there's a way to adapt the staging of a scene to TV in a way that makes it more effective. Let's face it, though, most people in the TV viewing audience aren't interested in live theater as an art form and don't have a frame of reference for it. When they see scenes out of context it seems odd.

Honestly, I wish the Tony broadcast could be as true to all aspects of the theater as possible and include scenes from everything. But TV is a business and networks are there to primarily make money, not expose their potential audience to "culture". They don't don't want to give viewers perceived opportunities to channel surf. That's just how it is.

[choitoy]

Posted: 6/2/12 at 3:26pm

Ditto on what broadwaydevil said in response to Playbilly. Really, if the Tonys move off of CBS and onto something else (PBS, Bravo, internet stream), basically the producers of shows would lose thier one National commercial. Granted, people bemoan the fact that the Tonys are not watched by the majority of American audiences anymore (no thanks to the fact that for the past few years, basketball finals usually occur on the same night), but I think there would be even less people tuning in if it was broadcasted any other way. So then why would producers pony up $100,000+ to present their show with a musical performance? Any musical numbers would probably be presented with just one or two performers, a mic, and a backing piano. And then we can completely forget about any play perfomances at all.

Bemoan all you want about how commercial the Tony Awards are, but this is my one time of year a majority of the country see what's going on in NYC.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 6/2/12 at 3:32pm

I'm not even sure what to make of the Les Moonves comment. Weren't they on CBS long before his tenure?

[bdn223]

Posted: 6/2/12 at 3:48pm

And if Cbs ever does drop the Tonys I wouldnt be suprised if abc picks them up, since it is owned by Disney. Disney has been trying to repay their debt to the Theater community. Cbs has also said in the past they get premium advertizng dollars for the Tonys and ad space sells fast because the Tonys have a extremly desireable target audience, the upper-middle class and upper-class aka the 1%.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 6/2/12 at 5:07pm

Thank you, pal joey! I must have missed that year, because I surely would have remembered how some child scribbled crayon all over Kathleen Turner's dress.

But I can't help noticing that they allowed that scene to run and build for a full 5 minutes, much longer than the Tony scenes I can recall. And of course the play contained (or provided an excuse for) a confrontation scene that filled the time beautifully.

Thanks again for sharing that.