Thursday, June 19, 2008 Velvet presents 2008 Tony Awards
IT'S the time of the year again when one of the most prestigious award-giving bodies present and give due credit to the most outstanding theater productions in the industry today.
Catch this year's Tony Awards on Velvet, the channel that brings quality Hollywood entertainment programs, at 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
There will be an encore telecast on Monday at 12:30 p.m., and on June 26 (Thursday) 12:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards started in 1947 when the Wing established an awards program to celebrate excellence in theatre.
Named after Antoinette Perry, an actress, director, producer, and the dynamic wartime leader of the American Theatre Wing who had recently passed away, the Tony Awards made their official debut at a dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1947.
Coming a long way from when it was founded, the Tony Awards boasts of honoring exceptional and brilliant theatrical productions, actors, actresses, directors and the people behind them, from the sound, lighting and costume design.
The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards has announced that this year's Tony telecast will include a whopping 13 musical numbers, making it the most performance-filled Tony ceremony in recent history.
The three-hour special hosted by Whoopi Goldberg will be televised from the stage at Radio City Music Hall, New York City on Velvet this June.
The show will include performances from all of the nominated Best Musicals and Best Musical Revivals. It will also incorporate showstoppers from every single currently running Broadway musical that debuted in the 2007-2008 season-each of which received multiple nominations this year.
And, as previously announced, the telecast will include a special appearance by the company of "The Lion King", as well as a tribute to the long-running musical Rent featuring members of the show's current and original casts.
One of the nominees is the current Broadway sensation, Lin-Manuel Miranda. What makes this special is that Lin-Manuel, who is up for Best Original Score and Best Actor in a Musical for the acclaimed "In the Heights," actually wrote a new song with Filipino lyrics for Filipino actress, Marie-France Arcilla's character in the restaging of the musical, "Working."
He added and contributed the tune with Tagalog lyrics as a mother's lullaby to her child which is already getting good reviews.
Marie France, who will be portraying a Filipino nanny and singing the Filipino lullaby, is an actress who moved from Manila to Canada and later on to New York to pursue her dreams as an actress. Starting out as an "Ang TV" talent, fate brought her to where she is now -- a successful stage performer and TV host.
For this year, vying for Best Play are "August: Osage County," "Rock n' Roll," "The Seafarer," and "39 Steps". The contenders for Best Musical are "Cry-Baby," "In the Heights," "Passing Strange," and "Xanadu". (Press release)
