Danya Taymor could make Tony Awards history with a win for ‘John Proctor Is the Villain'
At last year's Tony Awards, Danya Taymor took Broadway's biggest night by surprise with her victory for directing Best Musical winner The Outsiders. Only 18 Gold Derby users were predicting her to prevail, favoring instead Maria Friedman for Best Musical Revival winner Merrily We Roll Along and Michael Greif, a theater veteran looking for his first-ever Tony for musical Hell's Kitchen.
Now on her second Tony nomination in as many years, Taymor looks to pull off another unexpected victory, this time for new play John Proctor Is the Villain. Even though Oh, Mary! helmer Sam Pinkleton is out front in Gold Derby's odds, our users are not underestimating Taymor again, as she ranks second in the category with a contingent of backers. If she wins again this year, she would make Tony Awards history.
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Taymor is on the cusp of becoming only the second woman in the history of the Tony Awards to win two directing prizes. Marianne Elliott is the only one to do so, in 2015. She now has three trophies for directing War Horse with Tom Morris, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Company. But Taymor could be the first woman to win two directing Tonys consecutively.
Eight different directors have won Tonys two years in a row. The first to do so was Mike Nichols, who took home the prize for plays Barefoot in the Park in 1964 and for both Luv and The Odd Couple in 1965. Prolific producer and director Hal Prince pulled off the feat twice, first in 1971 and 1972 for Stephen Sondheim musicals Company and Follies, sharing the latter prize with Michael Bennett, and again in 1979 and 1980 for musicals Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Evita. Tommy Tune would pull it off 10 years later with back-to-back wins for Grand Hotel in 1990 and The Will Rogers Follies in 1991, and Gerald Gutierrez would follow suit for plays The Heiress and A Delicate Balance in 1995 and 1996.
SEE 'John Proctor Is the Villain' stars Sadie Sink and Fina Strazza, playwright Kimberly Belflower on reading 'The Crucible' for the first time
The other four directors who won consecutively did so across the two different directing categories. Those men include Trevor Nunn for play The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby in 1982 (shared with John Caird) and musical Cats in 1983, Jerry Zaks for play Six Degrees of Separation in 1991 and musical Guys and Dolls in 1992, Jack O'Brien for musical Hairspray in 2003 and Henry IV (Part 1 and Part 2) in 2004, and Joe Mantello for play Take Me Out in 2003 and musical Assassins in 2004.
The only individual to take home both directing trophies in the same year is Michael Blakemore, who won in 2000 for Kiss Me, Kate and Copenhagen.
SEE 'John Proctor is the Villain' reviews tout 'explosive' play and Sadie Sink's 'body blow of a performance'
Taymor earned her nomination this year for Kimberly Belflower's John Proctor Is the Villain, which situates Arthur Miller's McCarthy-era allegory The Crucible in a high school English classroom in rural Georgia at the height of the #MeToo movement. The director keeps the dialogue amongst the high school students appropriately brisk, but crucially slows the proceedings down during scene transitions for the audience to peer into the vulnerabilities of the young women at the heart of the play, including Tony nominees Sadie Sink as Shelby and Fina Strazza as Beth.
In the finale, during which Shelby and best friend Raelynn (Drama Desk winner Amalia Yoo) get to express themselves and their justified rage through interpretive dance and performance, Taymor elevates the play into an unexpected sphere. She transforms the classroom setting into something far more atmospheric with the pulse-pounding accompaniment of Lorde's 'Green Light,' Tony-nominated lighting by Natasha Katz, and a beautiful moment of catharsis for Shelby, Raelynn, and Beth.
Taymor's prospects of winning the Tony have been on an upswing since the nominations were announced. She recently won the Outer Critics Circle Award, and although she lost the Drama League Award to Pinkleton, she subsequently picked up the Drama Desk Award; she did not compete against Pinkleton for that prize, as Oh, Mary! contended there last year for its off-Broadway production and won the Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Award for Cole Escola, though Pinkleton was not nominated.
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Sadie Sink on her character's 'emotional rage' in 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and her reaction to 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow'
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