What it Means to Sound Designers to Take Away the Tony

HowlRound: Last night there was an outpouring of disgust, sadness, confusion, anger, and frustration over a decision to again treat our field as though we are not as important as the rest of the team. This rush of emotion comes because this is not new to us at all. The amount of work in order to be validated by the Tony Awards as a category, which was instated in 2008, seems to have meant nothing at all if it suddenly goes away. It’s not about an award. It’s not about the spotlight—most of us work very hard to go unnoticed during a performance (unless we need to be noticed). It’s about validation for the work that we do and how hard it is to do this work.