A notable graduate of Illinois State University’s theater program was among the winners at Sunday’s Tony Awards.
Considered the Oscars of Broadway, Laurie Metcalf won the Tony for best supporting actress in a play, recognized for portraying Linda Loman in a Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
It is Metcalf’s first Tony since 2018, when she won best featured actress in a play for the Broadway debut of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women. This marks her third Tony overall after back-to-back wins in 2017 and 2018. Her first Tony was for her performance in A Doll’s House, Part 2.
Metcalf is perhaps best known for her work on television. She won three Primetime Emmy Awards for her role as Jackie Harris in the ABC sitcom Roseanne, a part she revisited in 2018 with a Roseanne revival and subsequent spinoff called The Conners. A fourth Emmy came in 2022 for a guest role in the HBO Max comedy Hacks.
Originally from Edwardsville, Metcalf is a 1976 graduate of Illinois State and charter member at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. The Chicago ensemble, formed in 1974 by Terry Kinney, Jeff Perry and Gary Sinise, recruited Metcalf, Moria Harris and John Malkovich while all three were studying theater at ISU.
In a recent interview with NPR’s Scott Simon, Metcalf described the period as “one of those lightning-in-a-bottle times.”
In her acceptance speech Sunday, Metcalf said she shared the Tony with another ensemble: Nathan Lane Christopher Abbott and Ben Ahlers, who are playing the rest of the Loman family in Salesman.
“They shaped my performance in this play, and so I do share this with them,” she said.
Metcalf’s win, plus five others for Death of a Salesman, makes it the winningest revival in Tony Awards history. The play also won statues for best revival of a play, direction [Joe Mantello], scenic design [Cloe Lamford], lighting [Jack Knowles] and sound [Mikaal Sulaiman].
The show is running now at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City.
