Slave Play
Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play made history when the nominations for the 2021 Tony Awards, celebrating the shortened 2019-2020 Broadway season, were announced almost a year ago.
With 12 nods, it set the record for most nominations earned by a play. And a number of experts predicted the production would win at least a few top awards during Sunday night’s four-hour Tonys celebration. But instead, it failed to win a single award and finished the night with another record — one perhaps less envied. Slave Play has now overtaken 1995’s Indiscretions as the play that fared the worst on Tonys night.
Indiscretions had nine nominations. Slave Play‘s 0-for-12 tally is comparable to the showings of musicals Scottsboro Boys in 2011 and Mean Girls in 2018, which each won zero awards despite a dozen nominations apiece.
Harris, however, was taking the development in stride, tweeting that he was grateful for the impact the show had.
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“Slave Play has never won one of the major awards of any of the great voting bodies but changed a culture and has inspired thousands of ppl who didn’t care about theatre before,” he tweeted. “Lol also I told my mom this was gonna happen this morning bc we knew who these folx were when we put the play on stage in nyc. [T]hat’s why we put a mirror up.”
He went on to say he’d be “partying tonight” because “history was made in spite.”
Other productions shut out on Sunday night include multiple nominees Betrayal, Sea Wall/A Life and Frankie andJohnny in the Clair de Lune, starring Tony Awards co-host Audra McDonald, who could have extended her own record for Tony Awards won by a performer if she had triumphed in her category.
In terms of surprises in individual categories, a number of pundits expected A Soldier’s Play‘s Blair Underwood or Betrayal‘s Tom Hiddleston to win the leading actor in a play prize in a category that also featured Sea Wall/A Life stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge. But instead, that award went to The Inheritance‘s Andrew Burnap.
