Tony Nominated Plays (Best Play) by Women
did you know women have been nominated for best play at the tonys 45 times!!! over 79 years!!! and 3 of those times were for translating Jean Anouilh!!! and including translation have won 6 whole times!!!! and 3 women have won as sole playwright!!! broadway is soooo progressive you guys.
edit: i realize this is not complete yet sorry
created by ducksndragons
last updated July, 2026
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ik you're only including plays here and not musicals, but I remember learning about the records Hadestown was breaking or contributing to in terms of women winning, being nominated or even just "allowed" to make their project happen.... For such a long-lasting institution and especially one that loooooves to pride itself on diversity, inclusion, love, creativity and the irrepressible power of art against oppression or whatever, it's really maddening to see such small numbers
(also this comment reminded me that I wanted to finish this so thank you for that sorry for the info dump!)
I am a musical theatre girly first and foremost but I don't usually read them! I was inspired to look into the Best Play award history by Bess Wohl's comment at the Tony's about being the first American woman to win since Wendy Wasserstein in 1989 (Yasmina Reza is the only woman to win in between!) Have you ever seen the 1981 Tony awards? The whole theme was "celebrating women's achievements in theater" but it...just does not work, and it's kind of funny how much it just exposes the gender imbalance in the industry. (I love the speech (https://youtu.be/mEjbjt1hSzI?t=4091) set designer Marjorie Kellogg gives announcing the nominees for Best Set Design. It's pretty exemplary of a lot of the ceremony, which opens with "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" and also features Ntozake Shange presenting Best Play while all the nominees are white men.)
i've not seen it but it looks painful 😭😭😭 kind of unsurprising though, in terms of institutions with severe cognitive dissonance Broadway (and arguably the theatre world at large) is definitely up there.
