NEW YORK CITY: Tony Award Productions has announced that the 74th Annual Tony Awards, presented by the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League, will be held digitally this fall. An exact date and platform for the ceremony has yet to be announced. A release from the American Theatre Wing also noted that the Tony Awards Administration Committee will determine in the coming days which of the plays and musicals that opened during the COVID-19-shortened season will be eligible for awards.

“Though unprecedented events cut the 2019-20 Broadway season short, it was a year full of extraordinary work that deserves to be recognized,” said Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, and Heather Hitchens, president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing, in a joint statement. “We are thrilled not only to have found a way to properly celebrate our artists’ incredible achievements this season, but also to be able to uplift the entire theatre community and show the world what makes our Broadway family so special at this difficult time. The show must go on, not matter what—and it will.”

The Tony Awards were originally scheduled to take place on June 7 at Radio City Music Hall and broadcast on CBS. In May, two months after Broadway went dark, CBS pulled the plug on the Tony Awards, instead opting to air a sing-a-long version of Grease on the would-be awards night. As New York Times theatre reporter Michael Paulson reports, in the time that followed Broadway closing, the awards administrators considered combining the 2019-20 season with the 2020-21 season and hosting one ceremony next year. However, as this pandemic continued to drag on, seeing theatres push reopening back to early 2021, Paulson reports that the committee decided to push ahead with this plan.