ENJOY THE EVENING

Honorees can sit back and relax on the big night

Some of the attendees at this year’s Tony Awards won’t have to stress about hearing their names called. We take a look at the evening’s special honorees.

JOHN LEGUIZAMO

Leguizamo has been a regular fixture on Broadway since his first show on the Great White Way: “Freak” earned him Tony nominations for play and performance in 1998. He’s made a specialty out of autobiographically inspired, comic monologues that have touched on everything from his dysfunctional childhood in Queens (“Freak”) to the women who helped him on the road to maturity (“Sexaholix”) to how he forged a Hollywood career (“Ghetto Klown”). He was nominated this year as the creator of best play nominee “Latin History for Morons,” an overview of oft-overlooked Latin people who have played major roles in American history, all framed by the contemporary story of his fraught relationship with his own son.

Win or lose, Leguizamo already knows he’s walking away with a Tony. That’s because he’s also the recipient of one of the evening’s special awards, honoring him for his body of work and, in the words of the Tony administrators, for “bringing diverse stories and audiences to Broadway for three decades.

“I just feel really validated for all my contributions,” Leguizamo says. “Not just for bringing a Latin voice to mainstream, but also because I helped change the one-man-show game. I helped create and pioneer