Black Women on Broadway Awards Set Return Date; ‘Some Like It Hot,’ ‘Six the Musical’ Stars Among Honorees (Exclusive)
The Black Women on Broadway Awards are returning following last year’s successful inaugural in-person event.
Dedicated to celebrating the legacy and achievements of Black women in the Broadway community, the 2023 BWOB Awards will honor three talents in New York at the Knickerbocker Hotel on June 5 for their work at the highest level of commercial live theater in the U.S.
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“We saw with our first-year celebration how necessary it was, how people left in tears and were so elated to be in a space where they didn’t have to be anything other than the Black women they are. There was such a freedom in the room, a vulnerability that is not often felt,” BWOB co-founder, The Piano Lesson star and Tony nominee Danielle Brooks tells The Hollywood Reporter about the group’s decision to return for 2023.
This year’s honorees include Some Like It Hot‘s Natasha Yvette Williams, the Audra McDonald Legacy Award recipient; Six the Musical‘s Joy Woods, who will receive the Florence Mills Shining Star Award; and wig designer Nikiya Mathis, who was selected for the Kathy A. Perkins Behind The Curtain Award.
Like the inaugural honorees, the 2023 recipients were selected as a way to highlight the history — that which has already been made and that which is being created now — of Black women in the live theater space. “Natasha has been out here for a very long time and we’re very excited to give her her flowers. Nikiya has been doing hair on Broadway and off-Broadway for years but also is an actor. And Joy Woods is up and coming, was in Six and is now in Little Shop of Horrors. She’s the first Black woman to play Audrey full-time in the 2019 revival,” Brooks explains.
The Audra McDonald Legacy Award and Kathy A. Perkins Behind The Curtain Awards are both dedicated veterans of the stage, but the Florence Mills Shining Star Award takes a broader approach. “It was our goal to make sure that we highlighted someone who has been leading the way for us for a while; who has not always been seen; that deserves that space — or to be held space for,” Brooks says of the group’s approach to the honors. “But our Shining Star Award is for someone who is on the road to that, and for us, that doesn’t always have to be an actress.”
The awards show, which is an offshoot of the Black Women on Broadway Instagram account launched in June 2020 by The Color Purple actress, Amber Iman and Jocelyn Bioh, is one of the few places in the theater community that not only explicitly celebrates the talents of Black women in the New York industry, but elevates those who work onstage and off. Because the BWOB Awards is just in its second year, Brooks says that the group doesn’t yet have the funds to invite every Black woman “involved on the Broadway scene,” but expects around 150 attendees.
“Our goal is to always make an effort to keep our guest list 50 percent talent and 50 percent behind the scenes. We know that, as actors, normally we are the ones being celebrated, but there’s a plethora of people that help to get this done. That is stage management, company managers, that’s casting, that’s producers, that’s swings. We want all of us to be in the space together and hold space together,” Brooks says of how the show views its honors.
Like the BWOB Instagram account, the awards ceremony — which Brooks says she, Iman and Bioh see as an annual event — serves not only as a point of reference for the various (and sometimes historically erased) accomplishments of Black women working in theater industry, but as a place of commune and community.
“These award shows can be super-calculated and can be very political. That is not our goal here,” Brooks states. “We work really hard to not just focus on the pop-y, eye-catching shows that are being produced and to focus on all of the shows. I’m thinking of the women in The Lion King that have had their place there for years. We see them, too. So that’s going to continue to be our goal: to treat people the way that we want to be treated in this industry. To see people the way we want to be seen.”
“For me, I get excited about celebrating people who might feel like the underdog,” she adds. “Who — just their pure being — is worth being celebrated.”
Part of how the trio delivers on that ethos is through (historically virtual) mentorship opportunities and ceremony-based volunteer opportunities, which last year saw upwards of eight Black female college students getting hands-on experience.
“I feel like as Black women, a lot of the time we don’t even know how to get past being the actor. We don’t get these mentorships about how to produce, or how to be a stage manager. We don’t get the access,” Brooks tells THR. “So if we can do that having young artists be involved or putting on these mentorship programs and fellowship opportunities that we started during the pandemic and now hope to gain the funds to do in-person, I think we’ll definitely see a benefit in the next few years.”
“It can be in the small moments where someone’s desire to be in this business shifts,” she adds. “The career path that they had can totally change based on just one encounter — one opportunity, one conversation — that they had. So if we can do that, then I think we’ve done our jobs.”
Last year, the inaugural awards ceremony honored Lynn Nottage, Qween Jean and Kara Young, and was sponsored by Morgan Stanley, Mark Gordon Pictures, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, Adrienne Warren, Door 24, Creative Partners Productions, Fourth Wall Theatrical and PGIM.
The BWOB co-founders are still in the trenches and “grassroots stages” of their second iteration, with Brooks, Iman and Bion “spearheading all of this and raising the funds ourselves,” between their many professional and personal commitments. “I’m out here running around with my three-year-old. There’s so much going on,” Brooks laughs. “But the need for this space is so important that this is something we’ve always said we have to make room for. Even though it can be very challenging to get it going.”
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