Clint Ramos, head of design and production for Fordham Theatre, was nominated for two Tonys: one for best costume design, for The Rose Tattoo; and one for best scenic design, for Slave Play.

In a tweet, he expressed gratitude for the nominations and wrote, “May we always remember that this is only intermission and when we’re back, may our desire for a more equitable American theatre reflect the immense love we have for it.”

This fall, Ramos and the rest of the Fordham Theatre program have adapted to telling stories without physical stages on which to perform. He also has enlisted five university theater programs in the Northeast for an online production stemming from themes in One Flea Spare, a 1995 play by Naomi Wallace set in plague-ravaged London during the 17th century.

John Benjamin Hickey, FCLC ’85, was nominated for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play, for his turn in The Inheritance. Hickey won the Tony in that same category in 2011 for his performance in The Normal Heart. Of his performance in The Inheritance, Matthew Lopez’s six-hour-plus story about gay men in the 21st century that was inspired by E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End, Variety’s Marilyn Stasio wrote, “Hickey plays Henry with passion and dignity, a near-impossible combination to pull off.”

Kenny Leon, who served as the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre at Fordham in fall 2014, was nominated for best direction of a play for his work on A Soldier’s Play. Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, about a murder at a U.S. Army base in 1944 Louisiana, premiered off-Broadway in 1981 and starred a young Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, just four years out of Fordham. In the New York Daily News, Chris Jones wrote, “Leon manages to direct a show that doesn’t compromise those difficult themes [of systemic racism and violence]while also embracing the commercial and highly entertaining nature of the writing.”

This year’s awards ceremony will be held virtually, on a date still to be determined.

Theater director Kenny Leon, winner of a 2014 Tony Award for his direction of the revival of A Raisin in the Sun, and whose newest production,Holler if Ya Hear Me, opened last week on Broadway, has been appointed to Fordham’s Denzel Washington Endowed Chair for Theatre for 2014.

In addition to 12 years as artistic director of Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre Company, Leon was the founder of the True Colors Theater Company. He has directed opera, television, and eight Broadway plays.

His latest, Holler, which opened on June 19, is a musical about the late rap artist Tupac Shakur.

Leon praised his new chair’s benefactor, Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, with whom he shares a special bond: Washington was the lead actor in Leon’s Tony-winning production of Raisin, and Leon had previously directed Washington on Broadway in the revival of August Wilson’sFences—for which Washington earned a best actor Tony Award. Calling Washington an “American treasure,” the director said that Washington built the foundation of his career “centered upon the world of theater.”

“Theater allows him to expand what he does in his film work, and that’s why he wants to come back to the stage every three or four years,” said Leon. “That’s the true litmus test: Not every film actor can do theater, but most of your great theater artists can do film.”
Leon’s visiting faculty appointment will run through the fall semester.