This morning Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Sutton Foster announced the 67th Annual Tony Award nominations from The New York Public Library for Performing Arts. Playwright and civil rights advocate Larry Kramer will receive the Isabelle Stevenson award at this year's Tony Awards to be broadcast live on CBS on Sunday, June 9, 2013 at 8:00pm ET. Several LGBT-inclusive plays and musicals were also nominated for Tony honors, with Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein's Kinky Boots leading the pack with 13 nominations.
The Isabelle Stevenson Award is "a non-competitive Tony Award given to an individual from the theater community who has made a substantial contribution on behalf of humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations." Past recipients include Bernadette Peters, Eve Ensler, David Hyde Pierce and Phyllis Newman.
Kramer is best known for his 1985 play The Normal Heart based on his experiences as a co-founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis during the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He won the Tony in 2011 for Best Revival of a Play for the show, which is currently being adapted as an HBO film by Ryan Murphy, starring Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, and Jonathan Groff. Kramer also founded ACT UP, profiled in the GLAAD Media Award-winning documentary How to Survive a Plague.
Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein's Kinky Boots, based on the 2005 British film and the true story that inspired it, leads the pack with 13 total Tony nominations, including Best Musical. The musical follows the inheritor of a struggling shoe factory who is inspired by a drag queen to reinvent his business as a maker of fetish footwear. Nathan Lane is nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for The Nance which is set in the gay underground of 1930s New York and centers on a burlesque performer who is known for portraying stereotypically "camp" gay men. The play received five nominations in total. Bring It On: The Musical, which features transgender cheerleader La Cienega (Gregory Haney), netted nods in Best Musical and Best Choreography.
Catch the Tony Awards broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall on CBS on Sunday, June 9, 2013 at 8:00pm ET.