65th Tony Awards Stevenson Award is awarded to Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day. The Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre is given to animal trainer William Berloni, The Drama Book Shop (West 40th Street in Manhattan), and Sharon Jensen and Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. The Special Tony Award is given to Handspring Puppet Company, "for creating lifelike horses (manipulated by three actor-puppeteers)". The Regional Theatre Tony Award is presented to Lookingglass Theatre Company (Chicago, Illinois). Source: Tony Awards "The Book of Mormon" received 14 nominations, the most of any production, and won nine, including Best Musical; "The Scottsboro Boys" received 12
54th Tony Awards Lighting Design and Regional Theater. Michael Blakemore is the only director to win Tony Awards as Best Director of a Play and Best Director of a Musical in the same year. He won this year for "Copenhagen" (play) and "Kiss Me, Kate" (musical). The television ratings for this broadcast were 7.2, down from the 1999 Tony Award broadcast of 7.9. In prior years in which O'Donnell hosted, the program had ratings of 11.2 (1997) and 10.3 (1998). The winner of the award for Best Musical, "Contact", raised controversy about what constitutes a musical, as it is a dance musical with