TCR on Broadway: Interview with Author Peter Filichia on Broadway Musicals That Did Not Win the Tony Award

In the recently published Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks: A Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals That Did Not Win the Tony Award author and theater critic Peter Filichia takes a vibrant and extremely well-informed look into why so many classic shows failed to win Broadway's biggest prize. The book's title refers to three especially admired non-winners -- Gypsy (strippers), Follies (showgirls) and West Side Story (Sharks, a street gang).

The Tony Awards are given out by the American Theatre Wing, a service organization founded during World War II to oversee Broadway's contribution to the war effort. The Wing ran the famous Stage Door Canteen. After the war, the Wing remained in existence, shifting its mission to supporting the theater generally and bringing theater resources to communities. The Tony Awards -- named in honor of the Wing's co-founder, director and actress Antoinette Perry -- began in 1947. The first awards ceremony was a relatively modest affair in a hotel ballroom. Only a handful awards, many of them honorary, were presented.

TCR Recommends -- "The Play That Changed My Life: America's Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them"

The Committee Room loves theater and highly recommends The Play That Changed My Life: America's Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them (2009), a collection of entertaining essays by leading contemporary playwrights in which they recall the pivotal experience that set them on the road to a life in the theatre.

The twenty-one playwrights offering their reminisces come from a variety of backgrounds. Some of them, such as Christopher Durang and Lynn Nottage, were taken to the theatre as children by theatrophilic parents. Others, such as John Patrick Shanley and Diana Son, had little early exposure to theatre and came to it on their own through school productions, television broadcasts, or by reading play texts. Two of the playwrights (Beth Henley and Sarah Ruhl) had mothers who acted in community theater productions but nobody is from a family of theatre professionals.