The Tony Awards announce this year’s winners of the Isabelle Stevenson Award and Special Tony Awards. From the press release: “The recipient of the Isabelle Stevenson Award will be Tony Award-winning actress Bernadette Peters. The Isabelle Stevenson Award recognizes an individual from the theatre community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of one or more humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations … The Tony Awards Administration Committee will present a Special Tony Award to Actors’ Equity Association, who starting in the month of June will be celebrating it’s 100th anniversary. Additionally, The Tony Awards Administration Committee will present a Special Tony Award to Tony winning-actor and three-time Tony Awards host, Hugh Jackman. Mr. Jackman is being honored for his contributions to the Broadway community, both as a performer and humanitarian.”
This year’s Tony race lacks a clear frontrunner: “The season lacks the blockbuster Tony magnets of recent years, such as ‘The Book of Mormon,’ ‘War Horse’ or ‘Billy Elliot’ … Perhaps the biggest source of suspense will be how ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” will fare … Other new musicals this season include ‘Once,’ ‘Newsies,’ ‘Ghost‘ and ‘Leap of Faith‘ — though none of them has generated much critical or awards excitement.” LOS ANGELES TIMES
“Community” feud spills over into the Comedy Awards: “Chevy Chase and his ‘Community’ co-star Joel McHale buried the hatchet at The Comedy Awards Saturday while also taking some caustic digs at each other, the Post reports. Chase then momentarily rested his head on McHale’s shoulder, and McHale said, ‘What an absolute joy it is to work alongside a comic legend,’ before adding, darkly, ‘and I know all those pratfalls are because of an inoperable tumor.’ Chase then shot back that McHale’s, ‘a brilliant actor, who has a horrible eating disorder.’ The black-humored jokes were the latest in the ongoing feud between Chase and the NBC show after its creator Dan Harmon posted a vicious voice mail this month of Chase calling the show, ‘a [bleeping] mediocre sitcom’ that ‘isn’t funny’ and also griping about McHale.” FOX NEWS
Judge dismisses lawsuit over Grammy’s downsized awards categories: “The ruling last week by New York State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Oing granted the Academy’s motion to reject a lawsuit by Grammy-nominated jazz musician Bobby Sanabria and three others. Sanabria had been the loudest opponent of the Academy’s decision last year to reduce its categories and fold some genres into larger fields. In an interview Sunday, Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow said he was gratified by the court’s decision. ‘The decision makes it very clear in the eyes of our legal system that we, as we’ve said all along … have done all of the changes that we’ve made through our process based on our own rules, regulations and bylaws,’ said Portnow.” ABC NEWS
“The Good Wife” employs a cable strategy in its Emmy campaign: “Facing cable competitors who make 10-13 episodes a year, ‘The Good Wife’ is taking a page from the cable playbook in its Emmy campaign this year, trying to put as many episodes in the hands of voters as possible. The legal drama’s Emmy mailer contains 7 episodes, far more than the average 2-4 episodes sent by most shows. A cable series, Showtime’s ‘Huff,’ was the first to send out an entire season of episodes to TV Academy members in 2005. The strategy has been subsequently adopted by other cable shows but broadcast drama and comedy series have largely stuck to the decade-old tradition of only making a handful of episodes available to voters.” DEADLINE
How do the Outer Critics Circle Awards relate to the Tonys? “BroadwayWorld brings you a chart that illustrates the number of Outer Critics Circle nominees that were subsequently nominated for Tony Awards. Additionally, we calculated the percentage of eligible nominees that earned Tony Awards in the past five years (discounting off-Broadway nominations). Check out the chances that this years OCC nominees have at a Tony nod below!” BROADWAY WORLD
