Laura Benanti & Brian Stokes Mitchell to Host Creative Arts Tony Ceremony

Tony Award winners Laura Benanti and Brian Stokes Mitchell will host the Creative Arts Tony Awards, annual honors distributed in the hour prior to the start of CBS’s live Tony telecast. The Creative Arts segment will run from 7-8pm on June 7, preceeding the three-hour televised ceremony, which will be hosted by Neil Patrick Harris at Radio City Music Hall.

Benanti and Mitchell will hand out trophies for design awards, including the Scenic Design, Lighting Design and Sound Design in the play and musical categories, as well as Orchestrations of a Musical. While a full list of awards slated to be bestowed during the Creative Arts portion has yet to be announced, nods for Best Play Revival, Choreography and Book of a Musical are expected to be a part of the pre-televised event this year, a somewhat controversial decision that has some members of the theater community up in arms over what should get exposure on the live broadcast. Stephen Schwartz, the Tony-winning composer/lyricist of Wicked and Godspell, released a statement on behalf of the Dramatists Guild on June 4 specifically objecting to the ruling regarding the Book of a Musical category.

Benanti received the 2008 Best Featured Actress in a Musical Tony Award for her acclaimed turn in last season’s revival ofGypsy. Mitchell won a Best Actor in a Musical Tony Award in 2000 for that year's revival of Kiss Me, Kate.