Sufjan Stevens’ musical ‘Illinoise’ picks up Tony Award
Justin Peck’s dance musical Illinoise – based on Sufjan Stevens‘ 2005 album Illinois – has won the 2024 Tony Award for best choreography. While Stevens’ material sets the foundation for the musical and features heavily throughout, the award does not extend as far to the musician himself.
By winning the award, the musical beat a lot of other potential candidates. These include Here Lies Love by Annie-B Parson, Hell’s Kitchen by Camille A. Brown, Rick Kuperman and Jeff Kuperman’s The Outsiders, and Water for Elephants by Jesse Robb and Shana Carroll.
Illinoise was nominated for a number of other awards at the Tonys but failed to pick anything else up. It lost out on ‘Best Musical’ to The Outsiders while missing out on ‘Best Orchestration’ and ‘Best Lighting Design of a Musical’ to Jonathan Tunick on Merrily We Roll Along and Hana S. Kim for The Outsiders. During the show, actors from Illinoise took to the stage to perform a slightly modified version of the musical’s ‘The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!’
Illinoise premiered on Broadway in April after spending some time in 2023 at Bard College’s Fisher Centre and the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. It was both choreographed and co-written by Peck, who had help from Jackie Sibblies Drury. It could be argued the show was always destined for success, given the accolades those involved had behind them. For instance, Drury won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in drama, and the two have worked together on previous shows such as Year of the Rabbit, Reflections and Everywhere We Go.
The musical Stereophonic racked up a record-breaking number of nominations, as its name was in the running for 13 awards. However, it only ended up taking home one, missing out on the likes of ‘Best Orchestrations’ and ‘Best Original Score’. The play was put together by former Arcade Fire member Will Butler.
Also with 13 nominations was Hell’s Kitchen, a semi-autobiographical musical about Alicia Keys’ upbringing. It features a lot of Keys’ original music and saw a moving performance of ‘Empire State of Mind’ at the awards ceremony.
Finally, The Who’s famous musical Tommy almost took home an award for Best Revival of a Musical; however, it lost out to Merrily We Roll Along. The cast of the musical performed an acoustic rendition of the hit ‘Pinball Wizard’ with Pete Townshend playing the guitar.
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