Campaign to Restore Tony Award for Sound Design Heats Up on Social Media

The campaign to restore the Tony Award for sound design continues apace. The New York theatre industry was shocked last week when the committee that administers the Tonys announced without comment that it was dropping both sound design categories -- for a musical and a straight play.

John Gromada, the well-known theatre sound designer -- himself a Tony nominee for The Trip to Bountiful in 2013 -- has been spearheading a campaign to restore the categories. He has established an on-line petition that currently has upwards of 28,000 signatures. (See the URL listed below for the link to the petition.)

In other developments, a Facebook page, entitled Reinstate the Tony Sound Design Categories has been established. A new photo flash campaign, on the website Broadway World (http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Photo-Flash-Stars-Take-to-Twitter-with-TonyCanYouHearMe-20140615#.U58gYyimXh7), features such prominent performers as Bryce Pinkham (A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder), Terrence Mann and Charlotte D'Amboise (Pippin), and Sutton Foster, Joshua Henry, and Colin Donnell (Violet), and the director James Lapine (Act One, which was nominated for a sound design Tony) among others, calling for a return of the awards.

United Scenic Artists, the union representing sound designers on Broadway, has urged its members to sign the petition. And, as Lighting&Sound International reports, the UK's Association of Sound Designers has issued a statement deploring the decision:

"We were disappointed to hear of the decision by the Tony Award administration committee to remove the categories of best sound design of a play and best sound design of a musical from their roster last week.

"In 2008, Howard Sherman spoke on behalf of the American Theatre Wing and Broadway League to introduce the inclusion of these new categories, saying, 'We want to reflect an evolution of the understanding of the sound designer's role, both among artists and in the community at large. This is not an award for placing a microphone somewhere. It's about the creation of an aural environment that impacts our relationship to a production, just like any other design'."

"Sound design has evolved further since 2008 and now is an integral, if not utterly essential, part of every show playing on Broadway. To absent sound designers and their work from the awards is a failure to respect the contribution that sound designers make as core members of a show's creative team and the artistry that they bring to a show. The suggestion that '[a] special Tony may be bestowed in the future when a production has extraordinary sound design' -- provides little consolation. Marginalizing sound design is a profoundly retrograde step."

"It has been reported that one of the reasons for removing the awards was that 'many Tony voters do not know what sound design is, or how to assess it' (New York Times, 12 June). Tony voters are primarily made up of a wide range of theatre professionals, some directly involved in the creation of shows and some not. We would suggest that the panel does not need any more specialist skills to assess sound design than they do the other design categories. We would encourage the panel to seek guidance in assessing sound design from any number of professionals within our industry rather than exclude a large and integral section of the industry's creative workforce from a well-respected and prestigious event.

"We strongly encourage the Tony Awards Administration Committee to reconsider their decision."

On the Facebook page, Gromada writes eloquent about the situation:

"That we continue to be marginalized while the demand and need for our work grows exponentially doesn't make any sense. We need to do a better job, ironically, of being heard! Speaking with a veteran lighting designer the other day he told me, 'You guys had just started coming into your own,' and I thought to myself, 'Where have you been for the last 30 years??' Just starting?? We arrived a long time ago, and not because we made this discipline up, but because they fucking need us! We're not the ones who 'invented' sound design. It was directors and playwrights and producers who did -- we filled their need."

"And because they DO really need us, we will win this fight. I knew this the second I read the announcement. My first thought was one of exhaustion: jeez have to go through this again??!! Why do we have to demonstrate this to everyone time and time again???"

"To that end, I think we are going to need to be better organized, like they are in the UK, with our own sound design association. Our union is terrific and has done great things for and with us, but we need to be better able to speak in a unified way ourselves and prevent things like this latest slight from happening in the first place. So whadya say folks??"

Check back with www.lightingandsoundamerica.com for updates as they happen.