The Black Ladies on Broadway Awards are returning following final yr’s profitable inaugural in-person occasion.
Devoted to celebrating the legacy and achievements of Black girls within the Broadway neighborhood, the 2023 BWOB Awards will honor three abilities in New York on the Knickerbocker Lodge on June 5 for his or her work on the highest degree of business dwell theater within the U.S.
“We noticed with our first-year celebration how essential it was, how individuals left in tears and had been so elated to be in an area the place they didn’t must be something aside from the Black girls they’re. There was such a freedom within the room, a vulnerability that isn’t typically felt,” BWOB co-founder, The Piano Lesson star and Tony nominee Danielle Brooks tells The Hollywood Reporter concerning the group’s determination to return for 2023.
This yr’s honorees embrace Some Like It Scorching‘s Natasha Yvette Williams, the Audra McDonald Legacy Award recipient; Six the Musical‘s Pleasure Woods, who will obtain the Florence Mills Shining Star Award; and wig designer Nikiya Mathis, who was chosen for the Kathy A. Perkins Behind The Curtain Award.
Just like the inaugural honorees, the 2023 recipients had been chosen as a approach to spotlight the historical past — that which has already been made and that which is being created now — of Black girls within the dwell theater area. “Natasha has been out right here for a really very long time and we’re very excited to present her her flowers. Nikiya has been doing hair on Broadway and off-Broadway for years but additionally is an actor. And Pleasure Woods is up and coming, was in Six and is now in Little Store of Horrors. She’s the primary Black lady to play Audrey full-time within the 2019 revival,” Brooks explains.
The Audra McDonald Legacy Award and Kathy A. Perkins Behind The Curtain Awards are each devoted veterans of the stage, however the Florence Mills Shining Star Award takes a broader strategy. “It was our objective to be sure that we highlighted somebody who has been main the way in which for us for some time; who has not at all times been seen; that deserves that area — or to be held area for,” Brooks says of the group’s strategy to the honors. “However our Shining Star Award is for somebody who’s on the street to that, and for us, that doesn’t at all times must be an actress.”
The awards present, which is an offshoot of the Black Women on Broadway Instagram account launched in June 2020 by The Coloration Purple actress, Amber Iman and Jocelyn Bioh, is likely one of the few locations within the theater neighborhood that not solely explicitly celebrates the abilities of Black girls within the New York business, however elevates those that work onstage and off. As a result of the BWOB Awards is simply in its second yr, Brooks says that the group doesn’t but have the funds to ask each Black lady “concerned on the Broadway scene,” however expects round 150 attendees.
“Our objective is to at all times make an effort to maintain our visitor checklist 50 % expertise and 50 % behind the scenes. We all know that, as actors, usually we’re those being celebrated, however there’s a plethora of those who assist to get this finished. That’s stage administration, firm managers, that’s casting, that’s producers, that’s swings. We would like all of us to be within the area collectively and maintain area collectively,” Brooks says of how the present views its honors.
From left: Danielle Brooks, Audra McDonald, LaChanze, Amber Iman and Jocelyn Bioh on the 2022 Black Ladies on Broadway Awards.
Bennett Raglin/Getty Pictures for CRM Mgm
Just like the BWOB Instagram account, the awards ceremony — which Brooks says she, Iman and Bioh see as an annual occasion — serves not solely as a degree of reference for the assorted (and typically traditionally erased) accomplishments of Black girls working in theater business, however as a spot of commune and neighborhood.
“These award reveals may be super-calculated and may be very political. That’s not our objective right here,” Brooks states. “We work actually exhausting to not simply deal with the pop-y, eye-catching reveals which are being produced and to deal with the entire reveals. I’m pondering of the ladies in The Lion King which have had their place there for years. We see them, too. In order that’s going to proceed to be our objective: to deal with individuals the way in which that we wish to be handled on this business. To see individuals the way in which we wish to be seen.”
“For me, I get enthusiastic about celebrating individuals who may really feel just like the underdog,” she provides. “Who — simply their pure being — is value being celebrated.”
A part of how the trio delivers on that ethos is thru (traditionally digital) mentorship alternatives and ceremony-based volunteer alternatives, which final yr noticed upwards of eight Black feminine school college students getting hands-on expertise.
“I really feel like as Black girls, lots of the time we don’t even know how you can get previous being the actor. We don’t get these mentorships about how you can produce, or how you can be a stage supervisor. We don’t get the entry,” Brooks tells THR. “So if we are able to do this having younger artists be concerned or placing on these mentorship packages and fellowship alternatives that we began through the pandemic and now hope to realize the funds to do in-person, I believe we’ll undoubtedly see a profit within the subsequent few years.”
“It may be within the small moments the place somebody’s want to be on this enterprise shifts,” she provides. “The profession path that they’d can completely change primarily based on only one encounter — one alternative, one dialog — that they’d. So if we are able to do this, then I believe we’ve finished our jobs.”
Final yr, the inaugural awards ceremony honored Lynn Nottage, Qween Jean and Kara Younger, and was sponsored by Morgan Stanley, Mark Gordon Photos, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Broadway Cares/Fairness Fights Aids, Adrienne Warren, Door 24, Artistic Companions Productions, Fourth Wall Theatrical and PGIM.
The BWOB co-founders are nonetheless within the trenches and “grassroots levels” of their second iteration, with Brooks, Iman and Bion “spearheading all of this and elevating the funds ourselves,” between their {many professional} and private commitments. “I’m out right here operating round with my three-year-old. There’s a lot happening,” Brooks laughs. “However the want for this area is so vital that that is one thing we’ve at all times stated we’ve got to make room for. Regardless that it may be very difficult to get it going.”
