Tony awards: you don't have to be a Broadway person to see hope onstage

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/08/tony-awards-broadway-hugh-jackman-onstage

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The Tonys are coming! The Tonys are coming! The Tonys are ... the awkward step-sister of award shows, all insider-y New York show-biz in an industry that already hands out trophies like the free bread sticks at Olive Garden. A collective nation shrugs; the world turns.

Sure, the Golden Globes have drunk celebrities. The Oscars have prestige, glamour. But the Tony Awards have hope on full display. The Tonys have romance! Adventure! Andrew Jackson singing about populism! Because in the theater, as in life, anything is possible – and not just to a Theater Person, not this Sunday night. Anybody can watch the Tonys, and anybody can win. Anybody.

Also, the 2014 Tonys have a dashing host. I mean, can you imagine George Clooney MC-ing a Real Housewives reunion? Because that's pretty much what this year's Hugh Jackman hosting gig is like. Now I'm sure the executives behind the new X-men movie had better promotional opportunities in mind than an award show with its red-carpet programming broadcast exclusively by the local TV station that New York City cable boxes turn on by default. But Jackman is a Theater Person whose loyalty to the industry is unwavering, whose joy is infectious. A real-life movie star who this very fall is doing a play in the round! What a wonderful, hopeful thing.

Remember the Theater People: the gal rigging lights for her community theater's production of The Chalk Garden in Brainerd, Minnesota. The box-office manager of a struggling regional theater in Seattle. The high-school senior who wants to audition for The Music Man, no matter what his friends might think. They're watching the Tonys, alright.

They're watching not just for Jackman or all the other movie stars (Bradley Cooper!) and TV stars (Bryan Cranston!) who come to New York to do a show and pick up a trophy and a fat paycheck. They're watching for those faces you sort of almost recognize from an episode of SVU – the actors who have made it from light-rigging and ticket-selling to Broadway, with respectable, often great careers.

For us – the working actors out here watching – the Tony Awards are proof that you don't have to be famous to make it. You can work hard, audition, get rejected a lot and still be a star. You can be normal looking, you can be old, you can be fat – you can be all three! – and still work constantly. You might even get dressed up in a tuxedo tonight and read crazy poems during your acceptance speech. It's just like the Oscars, except cheesier ... in the most rewarding way possible.

Remember this, non-Theater People: if you think Broadway shows are too commercial, too bloated and bedazzled, remember that for every Ring of Fire or Tarzan there is a 90-minute play that takes place in a typewriter factory. Much like New York City itself, big-time theater is infuriating, hopeful, expensive and maddeningly divisive. But just look at the four shows nominated this year for Best Musical – After Midnight, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, a show based on the work of Carole King ... and Aladdin? Those could not be more different, and you couldn't have a more argumentative major award-show pool category.

That's what's so invigorating about Broadway – any show can get made, you never know which one will take off, and not even the Theater People can tell who's going to win. Maybe this musical about a kid in a wheelchair and his alien friend will be the next Wicked. Maybe not. But that high-school senior next door could definitely end up onstage next to Hugh Jackman. And that's a lot more exciting than bread sticks.