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Tony Awards: Stereophonic Wins Best Play, Illinoise Wins Best Choreography

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There’s a lot of indie-adjacent stuff on Broadway these days, and some of it did extremely well at last night’s Tony Awards. This year’s big winner was Sterephonic, a play about a fictional ’70s rock band that looks and acts a whole lot like Fleetwood Mac. The former Arcade Fire member Will Butler wrote original songs for the show.

Going into last night’s Tony Awards, Stereophonic had 13 nominations, the most in Tony history. It won five awards: Best Play, Best Direction – Play for Daniel Aukin, Actor In A Featured Role – Play for Will Brill, Scenic Design – Play for David Zinn, and Sound Design – Play for Ryan Rumery. Here’s the Best Play acceptance speech and the Stereophonic performance from last night’s show.

Illinoise, the musical based on Sufjan Stevens’ classic 2005 album Illinois, was up for four awards, and Justin Peck won the award for Best Choreography. During the telecast, the Illinoise company, including My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Nova, performed Stevens’ song “The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out to Get Us!”

The Alicia Keys musical Hell’s Kitchen was actually tied with Stereophonic for 13 nominations, and it won two awards, Actress In A Leading Role – Musical for Maleah Joi Moon and Actress In A Featured Role – Musical for Kecia Lewis. David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Here Lies Love had four nominations, and it didn’t win any awards. The Outsiders won Best Musical.

Ariana DeBose returned to host the Tonys. During the show, Alicia Keys and Jay-Z performed “Empire State Of Mind” together. Sarah Paulson, who won her first Tony, was into the performance.

This doesn’t have anything to do with the Tonys, but Jay-Z also performed at Tom Brady’s Patriots Hall Of Fame induction on Wednesday. That crowd was way less visibly into it.