Tony's Special Award Honorees

[edjames]

BRAVA CHITA!!!!

Tonys Honor a New York Times Theater Photographer

“At first people wouldn’t let me in — why would they let someone in who wasn’t going to let them see the photo ahead of time?” Sara Krulwich said in an interview. “It made no sense to people.”CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

Sara Krulwich, a longtime theater photographer who has documented decades of Broadway history for The New York Times, is being honored for “extraordinary achievement” by the Tony Awards.

 

The awards administrators said Wednesday that Ms. Krulwich, who has been a staff photographer at The Times since 1979, would be among three recipients of this year’s Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theater, which are given to individuals, organizations and institutions that have contributed to the theater industry but are not eligible in any established Tony Awards categories.

 

The Tony Awards will also give honors for excellence to Bessie Nelson, a longtime costume beader, and to Ernest Winzer Cleaners, a 110-year-old business with a specialty in costume work.

 

Earlier this week, Tony administrators announced that this year’s lifetime achievement awards would go to the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and the performer Chita Rivera, and that an annual award for volunteerism would go to Nick Scandalios, executive vice president of the Nederlander Organization, for his work as an advocate for gay parents and their children.

 

Ms. Krulwich, 67, became the first culture photographer for The Times in 1994, and gradually made theater into a beat as she successfully fought to win access from producers accustomed to relying on photographers they hired. “At first people wouldn’t let me in — why would they let someone in who wasn’t going to let them see the photo ahead of time?” Ms. Krulwich said in an interview. “It made no sense to people.”

 

Access continues to be a challenge. “One hundred percent of the time there is a question — whether I’ll get in, how much I can shoot, where I can shoot,” she said. “But it’s the rare play that doesn’t let me shoot something.”

 

Among the early milestones of Ms. Krulwich’s career: She photographed developmental work on the Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s masterwork, “Angels in America,” and she photographed Jonathan Larson, the writer and composer of “Rent,” hours before his unexpected death the night before the show’s first Off Broadway preview at New York Theater Workshop. A more recent memory: She shot the final dress rehearsal of “Hamilton,” just before the first preview for that show’s Off Broadway production at the Public Theater.

 

She said she looks for “emotion and energy” when composing a photograph.

 

“I think this is the best job in the world,” Ms. Krulwich said. “I’m surrounded by these amazing people, everybody I watch is at the top of their careers, and I’m inside while they’re thinking about how to make theater. I love it.”

[nsguy45]

Jerry Herman is said to be returning to NYC soon while the house next door to him in FL is being imploded and rebuilt. Wouldn't it be a nice gesture if the Tony Awards somehow included him in this year's broadcast?