The Story Behind the Photo—The Tony Toast

It was one of the signature moments in SCR’s history and one of the very few things that could pull then-Artistic Director David Emmes away from an important lunch meeting with a trustee. And a toast was in order.

This week’s The Story Behind the Photo explores the “Tony Toast”—the impromptu celebration SCR employees had after learning the theatre would receive the 1988 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. With emphasis on the word “impromptu.”

“That was completely spontaneous. There wasn’t anything planned,” Emmes said. “Someone in-house who knew how to use a camera got up on a high spot. It was something that seemed very much of the moment, very spontaneous. Nothing like, ‘Wear your nice clothes tomorrow.’ It was just everyone at the height of the excitement about the news.”

Emmes said there were SCR staff and artists who were brought in once they decided to take a picture and the picture was taken no more than an hour after the news broke. He didn’t remember what the liquid was in his and fellow Artistic Director Martin Benson’s glasses, but quipped that “it wasn’t like we had a big cache of champagne at the ready. …”

How the news broke to Emmes is a sidebar to the story. He was across the street from the theatre, having lunch at the Center Club with a member of the Board of Trustees. A club employee approached them and said there was an important phone call for him.

“I was thinking, ‘What could possibly have befallen us for them to be calling me out during an important trustee meeting?’ And it was Martin on the phone. He said, ‘My God, we got the Tony! They gave us the Tony Award!’ I said, ‘Oh.’

“That was, suffice to say, shocking. I pretty much cut short the lunch and said I had to get back across the street. There was great revelry going on, understandably, with people getting excited about what happened.”