And not only did audiences show up but these endeavors were also rewarded by the Tony Awards, which will air on Sunday, June 12 with recent Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose as host. Though utterly debilitating for the industry, the year-and-a-half-long COVID break-which ended when the play Pass Over began previews on August 4 ( Springsteen on Broadway reopened in June but was billed as a concert)-forced a reset that shook up Broadway houses and made room for some of the most wildly compelling and surprising commercial theater in recent memory. A one-woman lip-sync marathon a metafictional musical about race, sexuality, and identity Rachel Dratch crawling around on hallucinogens-these are just some of the revelatory Tony-nominated productions and performances on offer this Broadway season, the first since theaters closed in March of 2020.
