The Tony Awards is a prestigious award ceremony held every year to honor achievements in the theatre department. The event was held at the United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights, New York with the Oscar-winning actress Ariana DeBose returning to host the telecast for the second time in a row. Despite the uncertainty of the event getting canceled due to the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America, the event went by smoothly without any planned script with the idea of renowned musician Lin-Manuel Miranda performing an opening number completely scrapped.
The ceremony was a huge win for the LGBTQIA+ community as Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee made history by becoming the first nonbinary recipients of the acting award for the plays Shucked and Some Like it Hot respectively. “I’ve wanted this my entire life and I thank each and every one of you in this room right now,” Newell said in their speech. “Thank you, Broadway, for seeing me. I should not be up here as a queer, nonbinary, fat, Black little baby from Massachusetts.” Newell said tearfully in their speech. “I look at the word ‘actor’ as one, my vocation, and two, genderless. We don’t say plumbess for plumber. We don’t say janitoress for janitor. We say plumber, we say janitor. That’s how I look at the word, and that’s how I chose my category.” Alex said this to The New York Times last month when they agreed to be considered in the gendered actor category. Newell uses all pronouns and they rose to fame for playing Unique Adams on the show "Glee" J. Harrison Ghee kickstarted their career at Tokyo Disneyland with theie persona, Crystal Demure and made their Broadway debut with Kinky Boots as Lola. Ghee played a jazz musician exploring their gender identity in their play meanwhile Newell played an independent whiskey distiller. Other prominent winners were the film actress Jodie Comer for the one-woman play “Prima Facie” which was her debut as a Broadway actress and Sean Hayes for the play “Good Night, Oscar” “Some Like it All” lead the nominations race with 13 of them in its kitty.
Overall, the event was fruitful for all the winners and nominees and showed that award shows can be entertaining without a script as well. Some notable music performances from the event include the titular song from the most nominated play of the event Some Like It Hot, Roar from &Juliet, Sweet Caroline from A Beautiful Noise, Anagram from Kimberley Akimbo among many others. This day will go down in history for the inclusivity it celebrated in the theatre field.