Booming Broadway to honor its best with Tonys

With a backdrop of the best box-office season ever, Broadway on Sunday evening will award its 2019 Tony Awards for outstanding acting, writing, direction and design.

The Tony Awards, also known as the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, recognize plays and musicals produced in one of the 41 officially recognized Broadway venues.

The awards show in New York at Radio City Music Hall are co-presented by the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League. The Tony Award season runs from about early May to late April.

There are 10 musicals and 15 plays up for this year's honors, and the highest-profile races are for best musical and best play.

The season included such new hit shows as the drama To Kill a Mockingbird and the musical Ain't Too Proud.

Broadway set a new annual box-office record, with a combined gross of $1.83 billion in the 2018-19 season, according to the Broadway League, the industry trade group. The figure represented a 10.3 percent increase over 2017-18.

Total attendance was 14,77 million, about 7 percent greater than last year's 13,79 million.

"We are in the golden age," said Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, in a statement in noting the diversity of shows that she said Broadway didn't offer a decade ago.

Helping the Broadway have its best season has been the increase in tourists to New York City. There were a record 65.2 million visitors in 2018, according to NYC & Company, the city's official tourism organization. In a recent survey, the Broadway League found that 63 percent of its audience came from out of town.

The prices of tickets went past the triple-digit mark. The average paid admission was $123.87 in 2018-19, a slight increase over the previous season's figure of $123.07, according to the Broadway League. Premium seats at some long-running hit shows, such as Hamilton and The Book of Mormon, have topped $400.

However, St. Martin said that more than 50 percent of tickets are priced below $101. "Only a small percentage of tickets are in the stratosphere," she added.

The Tony Awards will honor firefighters whose station is at the center of the theater district. Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion will be recognized with a special award for contributions to Broadway over the years. In the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center, 15 firefighters from the station died.