New York, NY (May 2, 2018)—The Tony Awards, the high-profile annual awards ceremony for theatrical achievements on Broadway, has announced the 2018 nominations for Best Sound Design of a Musical and of a Play. Significantly, these are the first nominations in the newly reinstated award categories, following their controversial elimination in 2014.
The nominees for Best Sound Design of a Play:
- Adam Cork, Travesties
- Ian Dickinson for Autograph, Angels in America
- Gareth Fry, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
- Tom Gibbons, 1984
- Dan Moses Schreier, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh
The nominees for Best Sound Design of a Musical:
- Kai Harada, The Band’s Visit
- Peter Hylenski, Once On This Island
- Scott Lehrer, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
- Brian Ronan, Mean Girls
- Walter Trarbach and Mike Dobson, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
Awards for the two categories were first given during the 2007-2008 theatrical season, but were halted in 2014 when the Tony Awards Administration Committee voted to cancel them, just three days after that year’s Awards ceremony.
While no reason was initially given for ending the categories, numerous Tony voters said at the time that they didn’t know how to gauge and measure achievement in the field.
The reinstated awards will be determined using a new method: All Tony nominators vote to create the nomination short list, but the actual awards will be chosen by a subset of voters chosen based on their trade.
The Best Sound awards were reinstated in late April 2017, with the announcement that the categories would return this year with nominations based on the 2017-2018 theatrical season.
That reinstatement came after an 18-month review by the Administration Committee in conjunction with numerous industry professionals, including sound designers. As a result of the effort, another category—Best Orchestrations—will henceforth be determined using this new method as well.
The American Theatre Wing’s 72nd Annual Tony Awards will take place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday evening, June 10, 2018, and will be broadcast live on CBS.
Tony Awards • https://www.tonyawards.com
