On Sunday, June 8, Steve Canyon Kennedy received a Tony Award for Best Sound Design of a Play for his work on Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, while Brian Ronan picked up Best Sound Design honors for Best Sound Design of a Musical for Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Unfortunately, the two may just be the last to be honored in that category.
On Wednesday, June 11, the Tony Awards Administration Committee abruptly announced the removal of the Tony Awards for Best Sound Design in both the play and musical categories, giving little reason for the removal of the category except for an implication that it's more technical than artistic.
The Sound Design categories were added to the Tony Awards in 2008, so the retirement of the category so soon is a blow to sound designers and composers who spent years trying to get the categories recognized formally.
The Committee's announcement was met with wide dismay in the Broadway community, with especially passionate outcry from composers and sound designers, and one of those, John Gromada, is on a mission and has already taken immediate action, with an official petition requesting that the Tony Committee reconsider the category's removal.
With over 24,000 signatures as of June 14, Gromada's petition is located at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/470/217/554/reinstate-the-tony-award-categories-for-sound-design-now and it's already making waves across the 'Net:
Gromada's petition makes an eloquent plea for reinstituting the category:
On Wednesday, the Tony Awards Committee hastily decided to eliminate the awards for best sound design -- awards that many of my fellow sound designers and I lobbied to have created in 2007. No direct explanation was given, but reports following the decision say it was partially due to sound design being more of a "technical" craft rather than an art form.
On the contrary, sound design is a theatrical design art that is a critical part of the collaborative art of theatre. The American Theatre Wing should continue to honor excellence in sound design as it does for scenery, costume and lighting design, and as it has done since 2008. Sound designers are an important part of the theatrical community whose vital contributions cannot be ignored or dismissed. Tell the committee to reverse this decision now!
The idea that a 'technical' category like Sound Design cannot also embrace and express art onstage is frustrating, to say the least -- after all, lighting design is an equally technical art, yet it has been a Tony category (and rightly so) for years.
About John Gromada
John Gromada is an acclaimed composer and sound designer who works in film, television, dance, and theatre. His Off-Broadway and regional theatre scores frequently combine original music with abstract sound design, for varied productions on the regional, national and international levels. Gromada is a Tony nominee for his work on The Trip to Bountiful, and his recent work includes scores for the recent production of Measure for Measure by Shakespeare in the Park, as well as for the critically hailed production The Orphans’ Home Cycle at the Signature Theatre. His theatre music compositions include such award-winning Broadway productions as Clybourne Park, The Trip to Bountiful, Gore Vidal's The Best Man, Proof, Rabbit Hole, The Columnist, Seminar, A Bronx Tale, Twelve Angry Men, Prelude to a Kiss, and A Few Good Men, and many more.
Gramada also composed the theme and score for the ITV USA television series "The Interrogators," which can be found on the Biography Channel. In addition to his Tony nomination for The Trip to Bountiful, he is also the recipient of three Drama Desk Awards, as well as the Lucille Lortel, Obie, and many others.
Here's hoping Gromada's petition finds its audience -- and that the Tony Committee reconsiders.