After a long delay and a lot of speculation, it’s been announced that the 2019-2020 Tony Awards will take place Sept. 26, 2021, in a two-part event airing across different CBS platforms. The ceremony will also take place in a Broadway theater, in front of a live audience—not at Radio City Music Hall, the show’s location for many years.
A presentation of awards will air at 7 pm ET, September 26 on Paramount+, the newly rebranded streaming platform owned by ViacomCBS. At 9 pm ET, CBS will air a special entitled “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back!” which will feature performances from the Tony-nominated Best Musicals and a live presentation of the Tony Awards for Best Play, Best Revival of a Play and Best Musical.
The CBS special, which will also be available on Paramount+ and the CBS app, will feature performances of “beloved classics” sung by Broadway stars and Tony Award winners. Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss are returning as executive producers of the special and Weiss will also serve as director.
The ceremony for the 2019-2020 season was originally scheduled to take place at Radio City Music Hall on June 7, 2020, but was postponed by the pandemic. Organizers then planned for voting on a shortened season, with an eligibility cut-off date of Feb. 19, 2020, and a digital broadcast in fall 2020. Nominations were announced Oct. 15, 2020.
As the Broadway reopening timeline shifted, the ceremony date was moved later. Voting for the 18 eligible productions took place from March 1 to March 15. At that time, organizers said the timing for the ceremony would be planned “in coordination with the re-opening of Broadway.”
The Tony Award nominations were led by “Jagged Little Pill” and “Moulin Rouge!” with “Slave Play” garnering a historic 12 nominations. The shortened season created unique circumstances for the nominations, resulting in only three nominees for Best Musical, a Best Score category that only includes plays and “Moulin Rouge’s!” Aaron Tveit as the only nominee in the category of Best Leading Actor in a Musical.
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