USITT to Once Again Sponsor 2016 Collaborator Party on Tony Night

USITT will once again sponsor The Collaborator Party, a Tony Night party celebrating sound designers and collaborators who have supported them since the Tony Awards scrapped sound design as an award category two years ago.

New York sound designers Lindsay Jones and John Gromada are organizing a second annual party to celebrate the work of Broadway sound designers and other unsung theatre collaborators during the 2016 the Tony Awards. They are hosting a national party in New York on June 12, with satellite parties planned in other cities.

The international theatre community remains baffled by the Tony Awards Committee's silence in response to public outcry since it cut the awards for Sound Design of a Play and Sound Design of a Musical in 2014. Many theatre organizations, including USITT, wrote letters asking them to reconsider, and over 32,000 people signed a petition to restore the sound Tonys.

The 2016 Collaborator Party will be held from 7 to 11 p.m. at Flatiron Hall in New York during the Tony Awards broadcast. USITT is providing financial support for the national event and helping with a satellite party in Syracuse, home of USITT's national office. Other satellite parties will be held in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Cedar City, UT. Please go to www.collaboratorparty.com to sign up for the party you want to attend, or to host a local party.

Whether attending a party or not, the Collaborator Party and USITT are asking those who support the sound design Tony to post and tweet photos of themselves holding signs with hashtags #Collaborator and #TonyCanYouHearMe. To upload the official sign, click here.

"Theatre is a collaborative art, and this is a celebration of it," said USITT Executive Director David Grindle. "USITT encourages our members to show support for our sound designers and all theatre collaborators on June 12."