The Ensemblist

We're celebrating the birthday of one of our favorite leading ladies, Celia Keenan-Bolger. She is a four-time Tony Award nominee, winning for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2019 for To Kill A Mockingbird. Beloved in the New York theatre community for almost twenty years, her first theatrical award was in 2005 for Outstanding Ensemble Performing in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee...

It’s a question that has been on host Mo Brady's mind for years. Definitely since the infancy of The Ensemblist, but probably earlier. “Why is there not a Tony Award for Best Ensemble?” It seems a simple enough question on the surface. If we can recognize actors playing leading and featured roles in musicals, why can’t we do the same for ensembles. A Tony Award for Best Ensemble would bring legitimacy and respect to the contribution ensemble performers make to shows...

So, we’re off! Thank you for coming along on my mission to discover how to celebrate, recognize and award great theatre ensembles. As I shared in the first episode of this miniseries, I started this journey wondering why there is not a Tony Award for Best Ensemble? But the more I thought about what such an award would recognize, the less convinced I became that it was possible to quantify what makes theatre ensembles so great...

Last year, I got to chat with the president of the Outer Critics Circle Awards, David Gordon. The OCCs bestow awards to both Broadway and off-Broadway theatre, but have never had a category for Outstanding Ensemble in their more than 70 years of existence. So I sat down with David to learn about the OCC nominating process and why, according to him, creating an Outstanding Ensemble Award is a lot more complicated than I had imagined. Here’s our conversation...

After hearing from Broadway ensemblist Darius Barnes about his decision not to include a category for Best Ensemble in the inaugural Antonyo Awards, I was curious about this anti-Ensemble award sentiment. Certainly every time that The Ensemblist has posted in favor of this kind of recognition, we see lots of positive feedback in the way of comments, shares, etc...

I knew there were other regional award ceremonies that recognize ensemble work, perhaps most notably, the Dora Awards in Toronto. Ahh…: Finally here I thought I could find a sustainable awards model. Like New York City, Toronto is a national mecca for the performing arts, with a long and esteemed track record of both scrappy small shows and major commercial productions. Certainly here I could find an idea of how to move forward...

So where do we go from here? When host Mo Brady started this mini-series eight episodes ago, he was positive that there was a way to recognize theatre ensembles. He was so sure of it that he figured the best and most equitable way to do so was to ask the Tony Awards to add a new competitive category for Best Ensemble. At the time, he assumed that recognizing ensemble performances was a no-brainer and that we only had to figure out what we were celebrating in order to move that plan forward...

After speaking to producer Eva Price about the commercial Broadway theatre, awards for performances are the kind of thing that can make or break a show’s life. So if awards ultimately behoove the theatrical landscape, why not have more of them? Well, that’s exactly what happened in 2020 when a new awards ceremony was added to the New York theatre industry: the Antonyo Awards. The Antonyo Awards were created in 2020 by Drew Shade and Broadway Black, an organization that supports Black theatre...

Eva Price is a Tony Award-winning producer for her work spearheading the recent Broadway revival of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Originally conceived for a cast of principals and chorus, this revival directed by Daniel Fish did away with the show’s traditional chorus and made an ensemble of twelve leading characters. Eva is also one of the lead producers of Jagged Little Pill, a musical with a chorus of 13 performers that work as the conscious of the show’s leading characters...

Helen Hayes panelist Matthew Kacergis is a DC based arts administrator and arts advocate. He has a long history of performing at regional theaters across the country, and now works as a Project Associate at the DeVos Institute of Arts Management. We talked about the Helen Hayes Awards, the categories they use to celebrate ensemble work and what kind of performances typically get celebrated in those categories.