Tony Award for Best Play | |
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Awarded for | Best Play |
Location | New York City |
Presented by | American Theatre Wing The Broadway League |
Currently held by | Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard (2023) |
Website | TonyAwards.com |
The Tony Award for Best Play (formally, the Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre) is an annual award given to the best new (non-musical) play on Broadway, as determined by Tony Award voters. There was no award in the Tonys' first year. The award goes to the authors and the producers of the play. Plays that have appeared in previous Broadway productions are instead eligible for Best Revival of a Play.
Legend:
† marks winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama [1]
* marks finalists of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama [1]
Year | Production | Author |
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1948 (2nd) | ||
Mister Roberts | Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan | |
1949 (3rd) | ||
Death of a Salesman † | Arthur Miller |
Year | Production | Author |
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2020 (74th) [66] | ||
The Inheritance | Matthew Lopez | |
Grand Horizons | Bess Wohl | |
Sea Wall/A Life | Simon Stephens and Nick Payne | |
Slave Play | Jeremy O. Harris | |
The Sound Inside | Adam Rapp | |
2022 (75th) [67] | ||
The Lehman Trilogy | Stefano Massini | |
Clyde's | Lynn Nottage | |
Hangmen | Martin McDonagh | |
The Minutes * | Tracy Letts | |
Skeleton Crew | Dominique Morisseau | |
2023 (76th) [68] | ||
Leopoldstadt | Tom Stoppard | |
Ain't No Mo' | Jordan E. Cooper | |
Between Riverside and Crazy † | Stephen Adly Guirgis | |
Cost of Living † | Martyna Majok | |
Fat Ham † | James Ijames | |
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British writer Tom Stoppard has won this award five times, more than any other playwright. Only seven other writers (Arthur Miller, Terrence McNally, Tony Kushner, Edward Albee, Neil Simon, Yasmina Reza and Peter Shaffer) have won the award more than once, each winning twice.
With ten nominations, Neil Simon has been nominated for the award more than any other playwright. August Wilson, with nine nominations, comes in second, followed by Tom Stoppard (eight nominations), Edward Albee (six nominations), Arthur Miller (five nominations), and Martin McDonagh (five nominations).
In 1994, Tony Kushner became the first playwright to win consecutive Tony Awards for his two-part Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes . Terrence McNally repeated this feat the following two years with his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class .
Edward Franklin Albee III was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified and named the Theater of the Absurd. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. It recognizes a theatrical work staged in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year.
Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.
Anthony Robert Kushner is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage, he is most known for his seminal work Angels in America, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, as well as its subsequent acclaimed HBO miniseries of the same name. At the turn of the 21st century, he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner is among the few playwrights in history nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award.
Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson, is an American composer and musical arranger best known for her work in the theater. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and six Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo. She was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
The Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical is awarded to the actor who was voted as the best actor in a musical play, whether a new production or a revival. The award has been given since 1948, but the nominees who did not win have only been publicly announced since 1956.
The Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play is an honor presented at the Tony Awards, a ceremony established in 1947 as the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, to actors for quality supporting roles in a Broadway play. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the Tony Award Productions, a joint venture of The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, to "honor the best performances and stage productions of the previous year."
Michael Cristofer is an American actor, playwright and filmmaker. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play for The Shadow Box in 1977. From 2015 to 2019, he played the role of Phillip Price in the television series Mr. Robot.
David Esbjornson is a director and producer who has worked throughout the United States in regional theatres and on Broadway, and has established strong and productive relationships with some of the profession's top playwrights, actors, and companies. Esbjornson was the artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre in Seattle, Washington, but left that position in summer 2008.
The Cherry Lane Theatre is the oldest continuously running off-Broadway theater in New York City. The theater is located at 38 Commerce Street between Barrow and Bedford Streets in the West Village neighborhood of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. The Cherry Lane Theatre contains a 179-seat main stage and a 60-seat studio.
Tracy S. Letts is an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. He started his career at the Steppenwolf Theatre before making his Broadway debut as a playwright for August: Osage County (2007), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. As an actor, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for the Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2013).
Katori Hall is an American playwright, screenwriter, producer, actress, and director from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall's best known works include the hit television series P-Valley, the Tony-nominated Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and plays such as Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho, Children of Killers, The Mountaintop, and The Hot Wing King, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Sergio Trujillo is a theater director, choreographer, dancer and actor. Born in Colombia and raised in Toronto, Canada, he is now an American citizen and resides in New York City. Trujillo was the recipient of the 2019 Tony Award for Best Choreography for Ain't Too Proud and the 2015 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer for Memphis. He is the first ever Hispanic recipient of the Tony Award for Best Choreography.
Pam MacKinnon is an American theatre director. She has directed for the stage Off-Broadway, on Broadway and in regional theatre. She won the Obie Award for Directing and received a Tony Award nomination, Best Director, for her work on Clybourne Park. In 2013 she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California on January 23, 2018.
Tony Award for Best Costume Design in a Play is an award for outstanding costume design of a play. The award was first presented in 1961 after the category of Best Costume Design was divided into Costume Design in a Play and Costume Design in a Musical with each genre receiving its own award.
This is a list of winners and nominations for the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design in a Play for outstanding Lighting design of a play. The award was first presented in 2005 after the category of Best Lighting Design was divided into Lighting Design in a Play and Lighting Design in a Musical with each genre receiving its own award.
Working in the Theatre is the American Theatre Wing’s documentary series created to highlight the theatre industry's inner-workings. The series profiles notable members of the industry, and provides a closer look at unique stories and important work. Working in the Theatre aims to inform audiences about typically less well-known aspects of the theatre by sharing The Wing's extensive knowledge of the industry. The series has been running for more than four decades, and has featured extraordinary work from numerous members of the industry. Working in the Theatre receives leadership support from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Dorothy Strelsin Foundation. The series is also supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Thomas Joseph Kirdahy is an American Tony and Olivier Award-winning theatrical producer, lawyer, and activist.