San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Time to remove gender from acting honors in Tony Awards.
The American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League recently demonstrated an ability to evolve with the times, when the two organizations announced that this year’s Tony Awards ceremony would take place online, with a truncated season of shows under consideration.
But, while the coronavirus outbreak has forced theater to adjourn, now is the perfect time for the Tony Awards to take an even bigger step forward, one with implications beyond the pandemic: to eliminate gender from its acting awards.
(Oscars, Emmys, you’re less my bailiwick, but your time is nigh, too.)
When the Tony Awards began in 1947, the theater industry perhaps wasn’t ready to conceive that women’s and men’s performances could be in the same category — that there wasn’t some essential difference barring them from equal consideration. Even as the world has become more enlightened on gender, the traditional bifurcation persisted, with the justification that theater has so many more roles for men — and that their roles tend to be juicier, more complicated — that, without a gender carveout, men would garner far more nominations and awards than women would.
One argument against this reasoning is that guaranteeing awards for women obscures all the ways that women face discrimination elsewhere in theater, from whose stories playwrights tell to whose stories producers perceive as marketable. That line of thinking helped motivate Theatre Bay Area to remove gender considerations from its TBA Awards, which now grant two winners in every acting category regardless of gender (so that the same number of people would still be honored).
Another argument against this reasoning is that the gender dichotomy still leaves out nonbinary artists. It’s only a matter of time before the Tony Awards’ nominating committee gives a nod to a nonbinary artist, and when that happens, it will likely be painful — all the more so because that pain is avoidable if American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League act now.
In the Bay Area, such a scenario has already played out.
In March, I was contacted by actor Gabriella Momah, who got nominated for an acting award from the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle (of which, years ago, I was once a part). Momah is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, but for their superb performance in American Conservatory Theater’s “Top Girls,” they were nominated for a “featured actress” award.
When they found out about the nomination, “immediately, I was like, ‘I’m going to hit them up,’ ” Momah recalls. “I need to represent, for the nonbinary babies out there,” the actor thought at the time. “Actress” wasn’t accurate.
“It is an honor to be nominated, and I would just love to be represented accurately,” they wrote to the SFBATCC, in advance of a March 30 awards ceremony (which was later canceled because of the pandemic). SFBATCC president Barry Willis’ response, which Momah shared with The Chronicle, was to notify them that “unfortunately, we are too close to our awards event to restructure our categories for nonbinary performers. It is an issue we will revisit later in the year after we get March 30 behind us. We will be happy to make an announcement from the stage to the effect that, ‘Gabriella Momah wishes to be recognized as nonbinary.’ ” Momah recognized the good intention behind that response but still felt that it was “triggering and harmful” to be misrepresented.
“I feel like my gender is seen as an inconvenience, as something I’m choosing to be,” they say. “The language specifically of ‘wishes to be recognized’ — are you seri
ous? I am nonbinary.”
But Momah didn’t insist the SFBATCC take any particular alternative.
“I am not to say that I have the answers,” they say. “My only job is to pose the question. I’m not your diversity consultant. You aren’t paying me to restructure your program.”
In any event, Momah was not able to feel the nomination’s full honor.
“It sucks because ‘Top Girls,’ that was my first time being in an Equity show, having a significant role, performing for 1,100 people every day,” they say, referring to the union Actors’ Equity Association. “I haven’t even let myself celebrate how monumental that was for me personally.”
In lieu of an inperson awards ceremony, the SFBATCC posted a video of slides announcing nominees and winners. It still listed Momah under the Featured Actress — Play category, but with an asterisk next to their name. A footnote reads, “Identifies as nonbinary.” (Another actor, Denmo Ibrahim, won in that category.)
But Willis says that shortly after this year’s winners were announced, in response to Momah’s and other artists’ objections, the group chose to take a different tack in future years.
“SFBATCC has decided to eliminate gender distinctions in performance awards,” he confirms. “This brings us into line with the policies of TBA and other awardsgranting theater organizations. Henceforth, all nominated performers will be lumped together in their respective categories (supporting role, lead role, etc.) regardless of gender.”
The SFBATCC plans to issue just one acting award per category, not two, meaning fewer artists will be honored.
“The new genderneutral policy is officially in effect but won’t be felt until theaters reopen,” Willis adds.
To be clear, no one does theater for the awards (or if they do, they’re likely to be disappointed at least almost all the time). But awards still matter. They further careers. They make history. They proclaim the values of a society, of an art form — or at least rarefied portions thereof.
But just because awards purport to honor and celebrate doesn’t absolve them of responsibility. If awards shape art and the world, they must also allow themselves to be shaped in return.
And removing gender considerations from acting awards is just a start. If anything, it’s only the easiest step toward making awards more representative of and accountable to their communities. Who nominates? Who chooses who nominates? Who or what is eligible for awards, and why? Which aesthetics do nominators prize, and which equally valid ones get snubbed?
If awards don’t reflect a whole theater community, a whole geographical area, that can’t mean that only some types of artists make good art, so where does bias lie, and how do we evolve?