Talk:Tony Award for Best Musical

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Untitled[edit]

Is there anything to actually say about this though? Zephyrprince 11:50, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I could probably add a very brief introduction (something like Tony Award for Best Original Score or Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, but I don't really see it as being terribly necessary. The page is valuable as a list, and it's probably more useful to finish up the information on the nominees than to write a preamble. Kevin M Marshall 14:18, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Could we add a multiple win section like Tony Award for Best Original Score? MikeyB! 19:33, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Tony for Best Musical is technically given to the producers of the show; however, producers in the modern era aren't usually thought of as being terribly significant to the artistry of the show--nowadays, they're just open pocketbooks. And I don't see why Best Musical awards should be credited to the composer, lyricist, or bookwriter; they have the score and book awards to directly measure their contributions. Kevin M Marshall 21:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Producers[edit]

Since they are the ones who win this award, I will undertake at some point to change all the references. 24.149.45.52 (talk) 04:12, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Should we list the actual recipients/nominees (i.e. the producers)?[edit]

It seems counterintuitive not to list the actual winners/nominees on this page (the show's producers), but the problem is that, over the last 20 years or so, the number of producers listed per production has grown immensely (you can check for yourself at https://www.ibdb.com/awards). Before then, it was typically no more than a half dozen names, and often just one. The winners of the 2019 award (for Hadestown) were listed as:

Mara Isaacs, Dale Franzen, Hunter Arnold, Tom Kirdahy, Carl Daikeler, Five Fates, Willette & Manny Klausner, No Guarantees, Sing Out, Louise! Productions, Stone Arch Theatricals, Benjamin Lowy/Adrian Salpeter, Meredith Lynsey Schade, 42nd.club, Craig Balsam, Broadway Strategic Return Fund, Concord Theatricals, Laurie David, Demar Moritz Gang, Getter Entertainment, Deborah Green, Harris Rubin Productions, Sally Cade Holmes, Marguerite Hoffman, Hornos-Moellenberg, Independent Presenters Network, Jam Theatricals, Kalin Levine Dohr Productions, Phil & Claire Kenny, Mike Karns, Kilimanjaro Theatricals, Lady Capital, LD Entertainment, Sandi Moran, Tom Neff, MWM Live, Patti Sanford Roberts & Michael Roberts, Schroeder Shapiro Productions, Seriff Productions, Stage Entertainment, Kenneth & Rosemary Willman, KayLavLex Theatricals, Tyler Mount, Jujamcyn Theaters (Jordan Roth: President; Rocco Landesman: President Emeritus; Paul Libin: Executive Vice President Emeritus; Jack Viertel: Senior Vice President), The National Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop

The lists for the other nominees are of similar length. And unfortunately, it doesn't seem like they're in any meaningful order (i.e. I don't see any indication that Mara Isaacs had an especially prominent role, or was one of the show's chief backers), so there's no obvious way to select a few key representatives from the list. Searching some of the names, most don't have Wikipedia articles, and are probably low-profile individuals, so giving the full list of recipients is probably not giving the reader much useful information.

On the other hand, for productions that do list only one or two producers, they tend to be notable, and their involvement with the show is likely to be covered in secondary sources, e.g.:

It seems a shame to deprive the reader of this useful information. So, options?

  1. Status quo: don't list any producers
  2. List all producers
  3. List only notable producers (in the sense of WP:N - i.e. they have a Wikipedia article, or would qualify to have one)
  4. List only producers whose involvement in the show is mentioned in secondary sources
  5. List producers, but truncate the number of names at some arbitrary threshold. When a list of nominees/winners is truncated, indicate it with an ellipsis, and make sure there's an inline citation nearby that the reader can follow to get to the full list of names.

I think each of these comes with pretty significant downsides. Leaning slightly toward 4, since I think it best satisfies the goal of giving reader informative context, and discarding the information that veers in the direction of WP:INDISCRIMINATE. But it also creates work for editors, and may be hard to communicate to readers without WP:ASTONISHING them.

Thoughts? Also, a related issue: the tables of nominees and winners currently have columns for the writers of the show's book, music, and lyrics. This could easily mislead a casual reader into thinking that those people were the recipients of the award (based on ibdb, I think they were given the award before 1971, but now it's just producers). Does the benefit of the additional context provided by those names outweigh that risk of misleading? Colin M (talk) 15:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, on further thought, I'm thinking maybe the status quo is best. Yes, the producers are technically listed as the winners on the Tony's website and ibdb, and they get to go on stage and receive the trophies, but RS coverage of the award almost universally refers to the award as being given to the play/musical itself, not the producers. Coverage will sometimes mention the producers of the show incidentally (e.g. from the New York Times: The Lion King, a daring mix of experimental techniques with a familiar story that was a critical success and a smashing financial one for the Walt Disney Company, won the Tony Award for best musical last night.), but most of the time they're not even mentioned at all in coverage of the award. Colin M (talk) 15:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ain't Too Proud[edit]

Why is Ain't Too Proud credited as having music and lyrics by The Temptations? The Temptations did not write their own songs, and in fact I don't think they wrote any of the songs used in this musical. The Internet Broadway Database gives the following writing credits:

Book by Dominique Morisseau; Music by The Legendary Motown Catalog; Lyrics by The Legendary Motown Catalog; Based on the book entitled "The Temptations" by Otis Williams; Based on the book entitled "The Temptations" by Otis Williams with Patricia Romanowski; Music orchestrated by Harold Wheeler; Music arranged by Kenny Seymour; Musical Director: Kenny Seymour; Featuring songs by Edward Holland, Jr., Norman J. Whitfield, Lamont Herbert Dozier, Brian Holland, Barrett Strong, Smokey Robinson, Ronald White, Ronald Miller, Orlando Murden, Ester Navarro, Carl Christiansen, Rodger Penzabene, Sr., Helga Penzabene, Roger Penzabene, Jr., Cornelius Grant, Johnny Bristol, Vernon Bullock, Harvey Fuqua, Kenneth Gamble, Leon Huff, Gregg America, Gregg Crockett, Skip Batey, Fred Parris, Troy Carter, Anthony Fontenot, Armique Wyche, Ronald Isley, Rudolph Isley, O'Kelly Isley, Jr., Warren Moore, Robert Rogers, James Dean, Paul Riser and William Weatherspoon; Featuring songs with lyrics by Edward Holland, Jr., Norman J. Whitfield, Lamont Herbert Dozier, Brian Holland, Barrett Strong, Smokey Robinson, Ronald White, Ronald Miller, Orlando Murden, Ester Navarro, Carl Christiansen, Rodger Penzabene, Sr., Helga Penzabene, Roger Penzabene, Jr., Cornelius Grant, Johnny Bristol, Vernon Bullock, Harvey Fuqua, Kenneth Gamble, Leon Huff, Gregg America, Gregg Crockett, Skip Batey, Fred Parris, Troy Carter, Anthony Fontenot, Armique Wyche, Ronald Isley, Rudolph Isley, O'Kelly Isley, Jr., Warren Moore, Robert Rogers, James Dean, Paul Riser and William Weatherspoon

"The Legendary Motown Catalog" is not a person or group, so I would think we should credit the music and lyrics for Ain't Too Proud to "Various" as has been done with other jukebox musicals with multiple songwriters. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:46, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Listing Producers[edit]

With the full listing of all producers on all nominated productions, the article has become messy, unfocused and cluttered, especially from the 2000's onward. It is not allowing readers (and I count myself in this) to easily and readily access the information they are most likely looking for. Going forward I would propose listing the lead producer only, with referencing linking to a full list of producers. Some recent productions such as NYNY have over 60 names listed as nominees, this just isn't sustainable for to list such a long list of names for every new musical. I refer to an earlier comment made by @Colin M - "coverage of the award almost universally refers to the award as being given to the play/musical itself, not the producers. Coverage will sometimes mention the producers of the show incidentally" Mark E (talk) 10:41, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is comprehensive. Since the 1960s, the award’s recipient has been the musical’s producer, not its composer, lyricist or book writer. (I’ve included citations from the Tony Awards’ website for each year which names these recipients.) This is necessary context for numerous individual pages and lists such as the list of EGOT winners, where Whoopi Goldberg, Scott Rudin, John Legend and Jennifer Hudson’s Tony wins came as producers. It brings the article in line with comparable pages for awards given to producers (e.g. Academy Award for Best Picture, Grammy Award for Album of the Year, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series). Rburton66 (talk) 13:46, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The policies and guidelines that govern are WP:NOTDATABASE, WP:NOTREPOSITORY and WP:DUE. The long lists of producers are not helpful to a significant number of our readers and are (or should be) easily accessible by clicking on the links provided. In my opinion, the long list of producer names makes our article far less useful. I agree with User:Mark E that only the lead producer should be listed. BTW, WP:COMPREHENSIVE is an essay that has nothing to do with this. It is about censorship. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:22, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Anymore thoughts on this? I don’t want to get into an edit war again if I start condensing to list only the lead producer(s). Mark E (talk) 05:43, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would support just listing the first producer(s) and saying "et al." with a link to the full list online. It is a shame that more editors have not commented here. -- Ssilvers (talk) 13:37, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I Have edited for the last three years, keeping only those blue linked producers (and first listed producers in the case that none is listed). There's no exact science as to who is the "lead" producer or producers from what I can see. However before I do anymore, if we can compare 2020-2023 to the 2017-2019 and see how much more "readable" the article has become without any real loss of content (full list of producers for each year is available in respective linked reference for that year). I'm still of the mind they should not be listed at all, but I think this would be a reasonable compromise. Mark E (talk) 12:32, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me, except et al. should be italicized and preceded by a comma (I'll do 20-23). -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:24, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Major Reversion Might be Needed[edit]

Hi,

I've been following the trail of the user Rocojo04 after encountering some of their edits elsewhere and it seems in September they basically decided to "make uniform" all the "ands" and "&s" in the writing credits of the tables here. I think you might know where my worry is if you know writing credit requirements in the US. As a result you may need to make a major reversion back to an August version of the article [1] as they've potentially completely destroyed the accuracy of the writing credits you had here. Rambling Rambler (talk) 12:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what is wrong with what they did. Can you give an example, here, of what you looks wrong to you and explain why it is wrong? -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:04, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An example, out of many, in just one of the diffs would be this:
"Book by [[George Abbott]] & [[Richard Pike Bissell]]" was changed to "Book by [[George Abbott]] and [[Richard Pike Bissell]]"
I'm not an expert on music credit rules so maybe it doesn't matter here (which is why I didn't want to go through and revert dozens of references if unnecessary), but typically these have two very different and specific meanings in terms of credit. So say you have two people credited (A, B), typically it reading "Person A and Person B" means they worked independently of each other (likely on different drafts, with the first contributing the most material) while saying "Person A & Person B" means they worked as a writing pair.
Thought best to ask here because if this is the case with music credits then basically the user's edits have completely redefined how much work many people contributed to the works awarded. Rambling Rambler (talk) 17:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is general readership encyclopedia. Our readers would not know if "and" and "&" have different meanings in the industry. Generally our Manual of Style prefers words like "and" to symbols like "&", so I don't think it should be changed. -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:36, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If it was a general article I'd probably not have the same concerns. The query here though is that given this is effectively a list directly sourcing who and what awards were given to and for, then changing "and" and "&" is directly altering the meaning of the source being used (a bit like a source saying "Person A was in the general region at the time of the event" being written on the site as "Person A was at the site of the event"). Rambling Rambler (talk) 10:38, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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