These are the 2025 Tony nominees with Georgia ties

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Wendell Brock in 2020 called it “an oddly unsettling, wholly magical time-travel tale.” It debuted on Broadway last fall and stars Helen J. Shen as Claire and Darren Criss of “Glee” fame as Oliver. Criss was also nominated for best leading actor in a musical.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

“John Proctor is a Villain” ― the brainchild of Emory University professor Kimberly Belflower ― was nominated for best new play. It’s a dramedy that reexamines Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” through both a feminist lens and a Southern bent.

“It’s the play that lives closest to me and uses my Southern roots most deeply,” Belflower said.

“John Proctor Is the Villain” focuses on a group of high school students in a rural Georgia town who challenge their English teacher’s assertion that John Proctor, the protagonist of Miller’s original play, is one of the great heroes of the literary canon. The play, which recently debuted on Broadway, was Belflower’s reaction to the burgeoning #MeToo movement in 2018.

The Guardian’s reviewer Jesse Hassenger writes that “Belflower’s dialogue flows beautifully even when it tests the boundaries of realism, with well-placed laugh lines that relieve more and more tension as the show goes on; it’s a thrill to watch the characters find their voices.”

Sadie Sink, best known for playing tough teen Max Mayfield in Netflix’s Atlanta-produced “Stranger Things,” was nominated for best performance by an actress in a leading role in a play in “John Proctor is a Villain.” She portrays a high school student who returns to school after a long absence only to find that she has become a scapegoat in a world surrounded by bad male behavior.

Credit: CJ Rivera/Invision/AP

Credit: CJ Rivera/Invision/AP

Sink is joined in the same category by Atlanta native and Spelman College graduate LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who plays matriarch Claudine Jasper in “Purpose,” about a Black Chicago family struggling with multilayered interfamily conflicts.

“I have not tried to infuse her historically with my life, but it is so me,” Richardson Jackson recently told Vulture of her parallels to Claudine. “What holds her together? Those are the kinds of questions I’m asking myself.”

This is Richardson Jackson’s second Tony nomination. She previously was nominated but did not win for her role as Lena Younger in the 2014 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Jasmine Amy Rogers, nominated for best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical for “BOOP! The Musical,” started her professional theater career in the dual role of Frances Bassey and Donna Summer in the 2019 premiere of “Becoming Nancy” at the Alliance Theatre.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

Andrew Durand, a North Springs Charter School of the Arts and Sciences graduate, was also nominated for best leading actor in a musical in “Dead Outlaw,” playing the corpse of the turn-of-the-20th-century outlaw Elmer McCurd.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

In addition, Adam Guetell was nominated for best revival of a musical for “Floyd Collins” and Catherine Zuber was nominated for best costume design of a musical for “Just In Time!” Both worked on the musical “Millions,” which will have its world premiere May 9 at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre.