Bart Sher ’81 Wins Tony Award for Best Direction in a Musical

After two nominations (The Light in the Piazza and Awake & Sing), Bart Sher ’81 took home his first Tony Award for best musical director for the Lincoln Center revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. The Tony Awards show was broadcast on June 15 on CBS from Radio City Music Hall.

South Pacific was nominated for 11 awards and won in six other categories: best revival of a musical, best performance by a leading man in a musical (Paulo Szot), best scenic design of a musical (Michael Yeargan), best lighting design of a musical (Donald Holder), best costume design of a musical (Catherine Zuber), and best sound design (Scott Lehrer).

The musical, based on James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about World War II, Tales of the South Pacific, focuses on romance and prejudices on a South Pacific island occupied by American soldiers.

Sher has served as artistic director of the Intiman Theatre in Seattle since 2000. His other credits include The Barber of Seville; Nickel and Dimed; The Dying Gaul and Cymbeline. He has credited his involvement in theater at Holy Cross with helping to make him a successful director. “Much of what I learned at Holy Cross I put to use every day,” he told Holy Cross Magazine.

His upcoming directing projects include the opera Roméo et Juliette for the Salzburg Festival, and the New York premiere of Prayer for My Enemy at Playwrights Horizons.

• Read Bart Sher’s acceptance speech on the Tony Awards Web site • Watch two videos of Bart Sher (scroll to Winner’s Circle) on the Tony Awards Web site • Read a profile of Bart Sher in The New York Times earlier this year